TWELVE ANTI-TRANSIT MYTHS: A CONSERVATIVE CRITIQUE

A Study Prepared by the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation

by Paul M. Weyrich and William S. Lind

The Free Congress Foundation717 Second Street

Washington, DC 20002(202) 546-3000

July 2001

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CONTENTS

Twelve Anti-Transit Myths: A Conservative Critique 1

The Dirty Dozen: Twelve Anti-Transit Myths 3

Myth Number One: Light Rail has been a failure everywhere. Theestimated costs always prove too low, and the ridership projectionsare always too high. 3

Myth Number Two: Transit is a declining industry. 6

Myth Number Three: Commuting by rail is slower than commutingby car or bus. 9

Myth Number Four: Transit does not relieve congestion. 12

Myth Number Five: Where transit is needed, buses are better thanrail. Buses cost less and provide the same or better service. 16

Myth Number Six: Rail transit can only serve city centers, but mostnew jobs are in the suburbs. 19

Myth Number Seven: Rail Transit does not spur economicdevelopment. 22

Myth Number Eight: Transit brings crime into a community. 26

Myth Number Nine: Most Light Rail riders are former bus riders. 32

Myth Number Ten: Free market competition and privately operatedtransit is better. 34

Myth Number Eleven: On average, most of the seats on a bus ortrain are empty. 35

Myth Number Twelve: It would be cheaper to lease or buy a newcar for every rider than to build a new light rail system. 37

A Few More Myths 39

1. Transit subsidies exceed automobile subsidies. 39

2. Increasing transit funding does not increase ridership. 40

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3. Transit is not cost effective. 40

4. Most people do not want rail transit. 41

5. Monorail is better than Light Rail. 42

6. Light Rail is not safe. 43

7. Transit infrastructure is only constructed to get federal money. 44

8. Rail transit does not help revitalize downtowns. 45

9. Transit is an 'inferior' good; as incomes rise, demand declines. 46

10. Transit inefficiencies and failures are the result of politics. 46

11. Rail transit is a federal conspiracy. 47

12. Transit is not important because its market share is so small. 48

13. Transit systems are poor stewards of public funds. 49

14. Rail transit does not increase property values. 50

15. Before federal involvement, transit paid for itself. 51

16. Light Rail is promoted by overly low fares. 53

17. Cutting spending on transit would allow tax cuts. 53

18. Transit subsidies should be directed to users, not providers. 54

19. Light Rail is social engineering. 55

20. Transit costs more than it should. 56

21. Trains are noisy. 57

22. The overhead wires for Light Rail are ugly. 58

Critiquing the Transit Critics 60

Conclusion 63

Notes 65

1

Twelve Anti-Transit Myths: A Conservative Critique

A Study Prepared by the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation

A wand'ring minstrel I,A thing of shreds and patches,Of ballads, songs and snatches,And dreamy lullaby!My catalogue is long,Thro' ev'ry passion rangingAnd to your humours changingI tune my supple song!I tune my supple song!

--Gilbert and Sullivan, The Mikado

Today, any town or city that proposes to build a Light Rail line becomes a magnet fora new variety of wand'ring minstrel--the anti-transit troubadours. Travelling widely andalways singing the same songs, they tend to appear just before referenda on new railtransit proposals. They find a stage, join hands with local transit opponents and put onquite a show. With songs such as "Light Rail Has Been a Failure Everywhere" and"Transit Does Not Relieve Congestion," they have frequently confused the generalpublic, sown doubt about meritorious transit projects and delayed if not defeated effortsto provide high quality transit.

Besides their peripatetic nature, the anti-transit troubadours share two additionalqualities with minstrels of old. First, while the names change place-to-place, the songsare really the same everywhere. The transit critics offer identical criticisms of every newrail transit line, regardless of where it is to be built, whom it is to serve or what it is tocost. They sound less like a live act than a broken record.

The transit critics' second similarity to the old wand'ring minstrels is that their lyrics arehighly inventive. What they present as facts--"No Light Rail Line Has Ever Achieved ItsProjected Ridership"-- are simply not true. They are myths, clever myths, sometimesentertaining myths, but myths nonetheless. Basing public policy on myths can haveregrettable results, as more than one expedition in search of the Golden Fleece or theFountain of Youth discovered.

In this study, the third in Free Congress Foundation's series on conservatives and publictransportation, we do something conservatives really enjoy. We summon the anti-transitminstrels and their myths before the Lord High Executioner. We put on trial twelve anti-transit myths and face each with the facts. The accused are:

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• Light Rail has been a failure everywhere. The estimated costs always prove too lowand the ridership projections are always too high.

• Transit is a declining industry. Despite massive increases in transit funding since1980, transit ridership has declined. Rail transit has a very high subsidy perpassenger, and transit use has declined as much in cities that have built Light Railas in those that haven't.

• Commuting by rail is slower than commuting by car or express bus.• Transit does not relieve congestion. Congestion has actually increased in cities that

have built Light Rail, and building more highways will relieve congestion better thanbuilding rail systems. A rail line has less capacity than a single lane of freeway oreven a major arterial.

• Where transit is needed, buses are better than rail. Buses cost less and provide thesame or better service.

• Most new jobs are in the suburbs, but rail transit can only serve urban cores.• Rail transit does not spur economic development.• Transit brings crime into a community.• Most Light Rail riders are former bus riders.• Transit is a blight on the economy, while highways are a net public benefit.• On average, most of the seats on a bus or train are empty.• It would be cheaper to buy or lease a new car for every rider than to build a new

Light Rail system.

These twelve are the favorite lieder of the anti-transit troubadours, and they sing themfrom California to the New York island -- again, with remarkably little local variation. Beyond the "big twelve," they offer a wide variety of minor chansons, to which this HighCourt of Facts will also give some attention. Delightfully, our minstrel friendsoccasionally make the mistake of offering some solutions or predictions of their own,instead of sticking to the safer act of criticizing other people's. Where we have foundthese, we will most assuredly make the punishment fit the crime.

A warning to liberals and others with faint hearts: as conservatives, we share the LordHigh Executioner's fondness for capital punishment, preferably inflicted in ingenious andhighly entertaining ways. After all, what better enlivens an otherwise dull afternoon thanthe public beheading of a myth that had the temerity to disguise itself as a fact?

Let us then call our court into session and the first anti-transit myth before the bar.

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The Dirty Dozen: Twelve Anti-Transit Myths

Myth Number One: Light Rail has been a failure everywhere. The estimated costsalways prove too low, and the ridership projections are always too high.

Do the anti-transit troubadours really sing this song? Let's hear it in their own words:

• "Experience has shown, however, that rail ridership tends to be grosslyoverestimated at the planning stage, especially by rail advocates, while capital andoperating costs tend to be significantly underestimated." -- Clifford Winston andChad Shirley, Alternate Route: Toward Efficient Urban Transportation, BrookingsInstitution, 1998, p. 11

• "Ridership forecasts for proposed rail plans are notorious for being overly optimistic. Indeed, the actions of rail backers in some cities have been criticized in scathingterms as being deliberately deceptive on this point." -- Robert J. Franciosi, Light Railin the Valley: What Awaits Voters at the End of the Line, Goldwater Institute,February, 2000, p. 2

• "The forecasts that led local officials in eight U.S. cities to advocate rail transitprojects over competing, less capital-intensive options grossly overestimated railtransit ridership and underestimated rail construction costs and operating expenses."-- Don H. Pickrell, "A Desire Named Streetcar: Fantasy and Fact in Rail TransitPlanning," APA Journal, Spring, 1992, p. 158

When the Light Rail revival began in America in the 1980s, some early ridership andconstruction cost estimates were badly off. This is not surprising, because there wasno experience on which to base them. Light Rail (streetcar and interurban) constructionhad ceased in this country before World War II.

A report written by transit critic Don H. Pickrell, Urban Rail Transit Projects: ForecastVersus Actual Ridership and Cost, Final Report, published in October 1990 by the U.S.Department of Transportation, made much of these early errors -- despite the fact thatsome of the systems criticized had improved their estimates before the report waswritten. A case in point is Portland, Oregon. Portland, in 1978, had forecast Light Railridership of 42,500, to be attained in the seventh year of service. That forecast wasamended in 1985 to 19,270 after the first year of service; the actual count after one yearof service, in 1987, was 19,990. So while the first estimate was way high (actualridership in the seventh year of service was 23,400), it was corrected. Similarly, theoriginal cost estimate, in 1978, was $161 million for a combination of the Light Rail lineand a package of highway improvements. The actual cost in 1986 was $321 million, butthe estimate had been altered in 1981 to $328.5 million. The Pickrell report ignored thelater estimates for both ridership and cost.

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The Pickrell report is still cited by transit critics as the basis for their claims that "LightRail has failed everywhere." But in addition to that report's weaknesses, time has addedsome new facts. With experience, estimates for Light Rail ridership and costs havegrown much more accurate. In fact, if we look at new Light Rail lines, we find ridershiphas generally been underestimated, and costs and sometimes construction timeoverestimated. Examples include:

• Salt Lake City's TRAX Light Rail system is one of the country's newest; servicebegan December 4, 1999. It opened a year ahead of schedule and construction costwas under budget. Projected weekday ridership was 14,000 people. Actual weekdayridership for the first four months of the year 2000 was 19,039, 18,956, 19,742 and19,210 respectively. Saturday ridership was even higher, reaching 25,621 in April.

A few other facts about TRAX may be useful. A February survey of riders found that45% were new to public transit; many of these represent cars removed from traffic. According to Mel Pearson, chairman of the Downtown Retail Merchants Association,"Since TRAX light rail began operation, both of the major malls in downtown Salt LakeCity have experienced double-digit traffic count increases, especially during nights andweekends. Downtown Salt Lake has a totally different feel to it. You can tell by justlooking at the increased number of people walking down the sidewalks." A public thatpreviously was skeptical about Light Rail now wants more lines, soon.1

• In July, 2000, Denver extended its original 5.3-mile Light Rail line another 8.7 miles. According to the Rocky Mountain News, "Ridership on the new southwest light-railline exceeded expectation by almost 30 percent in its first week. . . A total of 11,264boardings were made Thursday on the new line. . . That was well above theexpected 8,400. Altogether, the 14-mile light-rail system. . . posted 28,472boardings on that day, well above the 22,000 projected. [RTD spokesman Scott]Reed said he wasn't surprised by the numbers. 'When we opened the centralcorridor in 1994, we were above projections,' he said. 'We just wanted to beconservative in our estimates.' "2

Speaking of the success of the new line, RTD General Manager Cal Marsella said inPassenger Transport, "These ridership numbers confirm that people have readilyembraced light rail for their daily transportation needs. Coupled with the fact that it costsRTD substantially less to carry a passenger aboard light rail than aboard a bus inrevenue service, light rail is a huge success now and will be an even bigger hit in thefuture. . . The demand for light rail parking is virtually insatiable. The same day we openadditional spaces, they fill up completely. This is further evidence that people willchoose to take light rail as opposed to having to drive."3

• Portland, Oregon's Westside MAX Light Rail line opened in September, 1998. In areport on its two-year anniversary, The Oregonian noted that "Those two years haveseen 16 million riders, with daily averages now above 71,000, a level not expected

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until 2005. 'When we opened Westside MAX, our critics thought the forecasts for2005 were overly optimistic,' said Fred Hansen, Tri-Met general manager. . . "4

• Concerning MetroLink, St. Louis's Light Rail line, Professor William D. Warren of theUniversity of Illinois at Springfield wrote,

Bi-State (the agency that runs MetroLink) projected 13,000 MetroLinkriders for initial service, increasing to 17,000 at the end of the first year.By July 1994 C the twelfth month of service C weekday ridership was44,414. Average Saturday and Sunday ridership for July 1994 was50,725 and 50,623. Projected ridership values were clearly exceeded.The projected patronage values may have been too conservative. Beforethe system was completed, however, many public officials and mediacommentators suggested that the projection of 17,000 patrons forweekdays after one year was ludicrously high.5

• The first 11 miles of Dallas's 20-mile DART Light Rail system opened on June 14,1996, on time and within budget. Initial ridership was projected at 15,000; actualridership in July, 1996, averaged more than 18,000. Current DART weekdayridership, with all 20 miles in service, is 42,000.

These examples show Light Rail done right. However, problems can still occur. Onewould, at first blush, appear to be a recently opened Light Rail system, the Hudson-Bergen line in northern New Jersey. Opened on April 15, 2000, Hudson-Bergenexceeded its estimated construction cost by 5% to 10%, although New Jersey Transitattributes the additional costs to design changes. Estimated initial ridership was 8,700;actual ridership in mid-December, 2000, was 7,600.

However, the main reason for the disappointing ridership seems to lie in the fact that theinitial line wasn't really a line at all. It was only the center portion of the actual first line,going from Jersey City to nowhere. When the two ends are opened, Hudson-Bergenwill connect real destinations. Ridership may then come to equal the originalestimations.

The trend, however, is the other way: most new Light Rail systems are built on or underbudget and carry more riders than projected. Why do the anti-transit troubadours keeprepeating charges from a flawed 1989 report and ignoring more recent evidence? Perhaps because, as entertainers, they are more interested in Dichtung than inWahrheit. . .

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Myth Number Two: Transit is a declining industry.

Despite massive increases in transit funding since 1980, transit ridership has declined.Rail transit has a very high subsidy per passenger, and transit use has declined asmuch in cities that have built Light Rail as in those that haven't.

In the critics' own words:

• "Public transit is clearly a declining industry. Ridership peaked during the World WarII period at 23 billion or so trips per year. . . " -- John Semmens, Public Transit: AWorthwhile Investment?, Goldwater Institute, December, 1999, p. 1

• "Rail seldom increases and often reduces total transit ridership." -- Thomas A. Rubinand James E. Moore II, Ten Transit Myths: Misperceptions About Rail Transit in LosAngeles and the Nation, Reason Foundation, November, 1996, Executive Summary

• "From 1983 to 1997, public transit's market share has [dropped] an average of 17percent in new rail urbanized areas. Transit market share dropped in all urban areasthat built new rail systems except San Diego. . . " -- Wendell Cox, Why Light RailWon't Work for San Antonio, Texas Public Policy Foundation, January, 2000, p. 4

• ". . . new US rail transit systems have generally performed poorly. Total transitridership has generally shown only minimal improvements and, at times, declined. Financial performance has been disappointing in most cases. . . " -- Jonathan E. D.Richmond, A Whole-System Approach to Evaluating Urban Transit Investments, A.Alfred Taubman Center for State and Local Government, Harvard University,November 1, 1999, Abstract

• "Taken together, the ten U.S. transit systems that added light rail served fewer ridersin 1995 than in 1980. St. Louis's system is one of the six individual systems withnew light rail that lost ridership over that 15-year period. . . " Peter Gordon, DoesTransit Really Work?: Thoughts on the Weyrich/Lind "Conservative Reappraisal ",Reason Public Policy Institute, September, 1999, p. 3

What's wrong with these assertions? Almost everything. In some cases, the numbersare correct but the conclusions drawn from them are not. In other instances, thenumbers themselves appear to have been invented. One quick example: according tothe Federal Transit Administration's National Transit Database, ridership on the tentransit systems Peter Gordon cited rose by 0.7% (weighted average) between 1980 and1995. After the new Light Rail lines opened ridership rose by 8.2%. In St. Louis,ridership rose 30.7% between the opening of the Light Rail line and FY 1997. So in hisfirst assertion, Mr. Gordon is wrong in his facts, and in his second, while St. Louis's

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overall ridership did decline between 1980 and 1995, he is wrong in his implicationbecause ridership has risen since Light Rail was added. And Mr. Gordon tries to playa little trick: by using 1980 as a baseline and cutting off in 1995, he carefully ignoresmost of the benefits of Light Rail because the average opening date for the Light Railsystems was nearly ten years into the measured time period!

In general, the facts are these. From the advent of the Model T until quite recently,transit was a declining industry. This is not surprising, because government offeredmassive subsidies to cars and highways. Most transit systems, in contrast, wereprivately owned and operated and, far from receiving subsidies, had to pay taxes. Asis usually the case, government intervention caused massive market distortions, to thepoint of almost wiping out public transit. Post-World War II building codes, which forceda separation of housing, shopping, and work places, also hit transit hard. Trips such asgoing to the grocery store, that people previously made on foot, now required a car. Notsurprisingly, the percentage of total trips made by transit fell dramatically as automobiletrips soared.

But recent years have seen a change. Beginning in 1996, transit's total ridership hasrisen every year. In 1999 and 2000, the growth in trips on transit actually increasedmore than the growth in trips by automobile travel. The year 2000 saw more than 9.4billion trips made on transit, the highest figure since 1959. That number doesn't lookbad even when compared to John Semmens carefully chosen 23 billion trip peak inWorld War II, when we had gas rationing (note again the artful baseline).

So if transit was a declining industry for decades, it isn't any more. One of the mostimportant reasons for the turnaround is the spread of high quality rail transit to more andmore cities, usually as Light Rail and commuter rail. Rail transit appeals to riders fromchoice: people who have a car available and can drive, but choose to take transitinstead. Why do the anti-transit troubadours focus their ire on rail transit? Preciselybecause it leads to rising transit ridership, something they don't want to see.

In fact, a new pattern is emerging, in one city after another. Once the first Light Rail lineopens and people experience the high quality service it offers, they want more. Referenda to expand the Light Rail system or speed up construction usually pass, oftenby large margins. And the anti-transit myth peddlers find themselves in trouble. Dallasoffers a good example. There, the people faced a ballot referendum on speeding upthe construction of Light Rail. They had already seen and in many cases ridden DART'sinitial Light Rail line. Despite the usual descent on the city by the anti-transittroubadours, the referendum passed by 77%. Give people a little Light Rail and theywant more.

Just as the transit critics are wrong in general about transit being a declining industry,they are also wrong in most of their specifics. Let's look at a few:

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• As to massive subsidies to mass transit, in 2001, transit will receive $6.3 billionfederal dollars, compared to $31.4 billion for highways and $12 billion for the airlines. Federal transit operating subsidies have actually declined, from a peak of $1,130million in 1981 to $246 million in 1999.

• Transit ridership in 2000, at more than 9.4 billion trips, is higher than it was in 1980,when Americans took 8.6 billion trips on transit. 1999's transit ridership was thehighest since 1959. Transit ridership has increased each year since 1995.

• According to the 1999 Federal Transit Administration National Transit Database, theaverage cost per passenger mile for Light Rail in the U.S. is $0.45, compared to$0.55 for buses.2

• Naturally, it costs more to build a new rail transit line than to run buses on existinghighways. But the highways too were built with tax dollars. The money comes fromdifferent pockets but the same pants.

• Of ten cities that added Light Rail to their transit systems since 1980, seven sawincreases in total transit ridership after the Light Rail system opened. Increasesranged from 14.5% in Dallas to 30.7% in St. Louis, 40.6% in Portland, Oregon,49.5% in San Diego and a whopping 75.8% in Sacramento.

So the myth is wrong on every point. Since 1995, transit has become a growingindustry. Total transit ridership is higher today than in 1980, higher, in fact, than since1959. The operating cost of Light Rail is lower than that of buses, and transit use hasgrown in most cities that have built Light Rail.

Overall, the effect of rail transit is summarized best in one study's look at San Francisco:

When the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit heavy rail systemopened in 1972, total transit ridership and bus ridership had been indecline since 1946 when World War II rationing ended. Since 1972,overall transit ridership, bus ridership, heavy rail ridership, and light railridership have all increased. These increases have occurred despiteinvestments in alternative travel by private vehicles, population dispersionthat makes it more difficult for transit to serve many communities, publicpolicy such as tax-free parking that supports private travel, and thecreation of a freeway system to speed travel to central cities and betweensuburbs. This increase must be attributed, at least in part, to investmentin new, modern, and convenient rail transit systems.3

No wonder our wandering minstrels' anti-rail transit tunes have a note of desperation tothem. Once people are given a chance to ride rail transit, they no longer want to listento the same sad songs.

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Myth Number Three: Commuting by rail is slower than commuting by car or bus.

In the anti-transit troubadours' own words:

• "Once out-of-vehicle, station access and transfer delay time is accounted for, railtravel times tend to be longer than the time required to complete the same trip bybus." --Thomas A. Rubin and James E. Moore II, Ten Transit Myths: MisperceptionsAbout Rail Transit in Los Angeles and the Nation, Reason Foundation, November,1996, Executive Summary

• "Even in the few corridors served by new light rail systems, it provides no speedadvantage compared to highway alternatives. . . New light rail systems average 17.2miles per hour, and the fastest at-grade system operates at 18.2 miles per hour. This is faster than the bus average of 12.8 [miles] per hour. By comparison, theaverage automobile commuting speed is more than 30 miles per hour (nearly doublethe new light rail operating speed)." -- Wendell Cox, Why Light Rail Doesn't Work,Texas Public Policy Foundation, January, 2000, p. 14

• "Using public transit is a time-intensive mode of travel. An American's averagecommute to work driving alone in his car is about 21 minutes. The averagecommute to work by public transit bus is about 38 minutes. The average commuteto work by light rail or subway transit is about 45 minutes. Time has value. Thesubsidies poured into public transit have been unable to bring transit travel times intoa range competitive with driving one's own car." -- John Semmens, Public Transit: A Worthwhile Investment?, Goldwater Institute, December, 1999, p. 7

Common sense tells us something is fishy here. If rail transit is slower than driving, whydo so many people drive their cars to rail transit parking lots and take the train intotown?

As usual, the facts are rather different from what the transit critics say they are. Let'slook first at the question of train speed vs. bus speed.

Here, the critics cannot even agree among themselves: Rubin and Moore, along withSemmens, say train is slower than bus, while Cox says light rail is faster than bus. Table 1, calculated from the 1998 National Transit Database, compares bus and railspeeds in thirteen different American cities; in only one, Denver, is the bus faster thanrail.

What about car speed vs. rail speed? Are all those people using rail park-and-ride lotsjust wasting their time?

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Both speed and commuting time comparisons used by transit critics tend to bemisleading, because they compare apples and oranges. Cars are faster if they are onfreeways away from city centers at rush hours, where traffic congestion is relatively low.Once the cars are in or near city centers during rush hours, highway speed dropsdrastically. That is the logic behind park-and-ride: the train bypasses the cloggedhighways in or around the Central Business District.

Table 1: Average Speed in Revenue Service FY 1998Average Speed in Revenue ServiceTransit System

Bus Light Rail Heavy Rail

Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority 12.4 --- 27.0

Baltimore Mass Transit Administration of Maryland 10.9 16.6 25.0

Buffalo Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority 10.7 12.0 ---

Dallas Area Rapid Transit 14.0 15.4 ---

Denver Regional Transportation District 17.8 10.7 ---

Los Angeles County Metropolitan TransportationAuthority

11.9 23.6 20.9

Miami-Dade Transit Agency 12.9 --- 25.7

Portland Tri-County Metropolitan TransportationDistrict of Oregon

12.6 14.3 ---

Sacramento Regional Transit District 13.3 18.3 ---

St. Louis Bi-State Development Agency 15.2 25.1 ---

San Diego Trolley and San Diego Transit Corp. 13.4 22.4 ---

San Jose Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority 13.4 15.8 ---

Washington (DC) Metropolitan Area Transit Authority 11.2 --- 21.2

In comparing car vs. rail commuting times, the critics introduce another spurious factor.Many of the commuting journeys represented in their "average commuting time by car"figures are short, suburb-to-suburb trips, not trips from the suburb into the city. Thelatter usually take more time because they run into the congested traffic in the citycenter, and because the journey itself is usually longer.

So it turns out that the people using those park-and-ride lots by the rail station aren't sodumb. Some surveys of rail transit users make the point directly:

• A Virginia Railway Express (VRE) study surveyed commuting time before and afterriders started using VRE's commuter trains. On the Manassas Line, 35.9% of tripswere less than one hour before the train was used and 44.4% after. On the

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Fredricksburg Line, 18.2% of trips were less than one hour before VRE and 25.3%after.8

• Looking at Heavy Rail systems, in a 1982 MARTA (Atlanta) study, riders were askedto pick three from a list of eight factors for riding the train as most important. For allriders, "Total door-to-door travel time" received 63.2%, the second highest ratingafter "total cost."9

• In a 1995 Denver RTD study, 13% of new weekday riders chose "Time saved usinglight rail" as their primary reason for using the train, third among seven options.10

• On a nationwide basis, the 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey foundthat, in answer to "I use public transit because," 43% agreed or strongly agreed that"It is faster than using a private vehicle."11

This data confirms what those of us with the good fortune to live in cities with rail transitalready know: in or near the city center, in rush hours, taking the train gives a faster rideand takes less total time than does driving a car through the congested (and sometimesgridlocked) urban streets and freeways.

But that's not all. There is icing on this cake. On the train, your time is not wasted. Youcan read, think, perhaps even write on your laptop. Behind the wheel, the most you canhope to do in the way of useful work is talk on your cell phone, usually to tell someoneyou are caught in traffic and will be late. And if you walk to and from the train station,on either or both ends of your journey, you get to add some exercise to an otherwisesedentary day without taking time to go to a gym or health club.

The train is fast. But it is also civilized, far more so than a traffic jam. There is a reasonso many people who have cars and could drive are taking trains to work instead. Andit's not because they can't read a watch.

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Myth Number Four: Transit does not relieve congestion.

Congestion has actually increased in cities that have built Light Rail, and building morehighways will relieve congestion better than building rail systems. A rail line has lesscapacity than a single lane of freeway or even a major arterial.

As always, let's start by hearing this criticism in the critics' own words:

• "Transit's effect on highway congestion is insignificant in most American cities. --Randal O'Toole, Urban Transit Myths: Misperceptions About Transit and AmericanMobility, Reason Public Policy Institute, September, 1998, p. 13

• "Rail is not a decongestant. New facilities cannot decongest existing facilities. Theimpact of transit on highway level of service is small." -- Thomas A. Rubin andJames E. Moore II, Ten Transit Myths: Misperceptions About Rail Transit in LosAngeles and the Nation, Reason Foundation, November, 1996, Executive Summary

• "But more important than the source of light rail ridership is that it carries suchmodest volumes in relation to traffic on adjacent roadways. In no case has light railattracted enough drivers out of their cars to materially reduce traffic congestion. . .On average new U.S. light rail lines carry less than 20 percent of the volume of asingle freeway lane couplet (2 lanes of freeway, one operating in each direction). .." -- Wendell Cox, Why Light Rail Doesn't Work, Texas Public Policy Foundation,January, 2000, p. 6

• "Most riders on new rail systems have not come from private autos. At best, 35-40percent of new-rail users came from private autos. . . As a result, there have beenno discernable impacts on auto traffic." -- Peter Gordon, A Transit Plan forHillsborough County: A Reality Check, Reason Public Policy Institute, June, 1998,p. 5

• "Because of light rail's shortcomings, it cannot lure enough people out of their carsto decrease traffic congestion and corresponding air pollution." -- Daniel R.Simmons, Randy T. Simmons and Samuel R. Staley, Growth Issues in Utah: TheFacts, Fallacies, and Recommendations for Quality Growth, Sutherland Institute,October, 1999, p. 33

Common sense quickly tells us that, contrary to the laments of the anti-transittroubadours, transit can and often does relieve congestion. St. Louis's MetroLink LightRail line provides a good example. MetroLink's single 18-mile carried 14.2 millionpassengers in 1999. According to a 1997 riders' survey, 69% were commuting to work.Most were doing so in rush hours, when highway congestion is at its worst. And only27% of MetroLink's riders either did not drive or had no car available. Allowing a fewpercentage points for people commuting to work but not in rush hours, we can say that

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about 60% of MetroLink's customers were taken off the highways, minus about 25%who had no car available or did not drive. Since most Americans drive to work alone,MetroLink is removing about 12,500 cars from St. Louis's rush hour traffic every day.

Is that a significant number? We asked the City of St. Louis Chief of Police, ColonelRonald Henderson, what effect MetroLink has on St. Louis traffic. He said:

The MetroLink light rail system has proven its extreme importance to usnot only during rush hour traffic, but it has significantly helped us duringspecial events such as Rams' football, Cardinals' baseball, and Blues'hockey games. The number of riders on the system positively impacts ourtraffic patterns on a daily basis.12

So how do our wandering minstrels get away with denying something that is obvious?As usual, they tune their supple songs in some rather artful ways.

The fact of the matter is that some kinds of transit have a strong effect on highwaycongestion, but other kinds do not. In general, buses running on city streets have littleeffect on congestion, because they do not provide a better level of service than theautos that impede their flow. Hence, most of the people on them are transit dependent.That means they have no car, or at least no car available for the trip they want to make,or they do not drive. Take away the bus and they stay home. They cannot get on theroad and add to the traffic.

Rail transit, and sometimes buses running express services from the suburbs straightdowntown, are quite different. They appeal strongly to riders from choice, people whocan and would drive if the train or the bus were not there. As we just saw, up to 60%of the people on St. Louis's Light Rail system would be on the road in their cars if thetrains stopped running.

So how can the transit critics claim that transit has little effect on congestion? Becausein most cities, there is little or no rail transit. Often there aren't even express buses. Ifquality transit isn't there, people can't ride it. They have to drive instead.

Two ironies hit us right in the face here like cold, dead flounders. First, since it is railtransit that best reduces highway congestion, the transit critics by their own logic shouldfavor rail rather than damning it. Unless, of course, they really aren't interested inreducing highway congestion. That leads to our second irony. The highway lobby, thesame people who provide a number of the anti-transit troubadours with their funding, arethe people who destroyed the rail transit systems most cities used to have! Imaginehow much less traffic Los Angeles would have today if that city still had its Red Cars andthe more than 1,000 miles of track they rode on. Who framed Roger Rabbit? The samepeople who now tell your city, "Don't build Light Rail!"

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Of course, the transit critics have their own solution to traffic congestion: build morehighways. But in one of the paradoxes of transportation planning, it turns out thatdoesn't work. As a recent article in Scientific American put it:

Like Alice at the Mad Hatter's tea party, highway planners are caught ina vicious cycle, says Martin Wachs of the University of CaliforniaTransportation Center. "You can never build enough roads to keep upwith congestion. Traffic always rises to exceed capacity."13

The problem here is what planners call "suppressed demand." What "suppresseddemand" means is that new or expanded roadways draw more cars, to the point wherethey quickly become congested themselves. Study after study has documented thiseffect:

• "Our study. . . found that adding lane-miles does induce substantial new traffic. . . A1.0 percent increase in lane miles induces a 0.9 percent increase in VMT [VehicleMiles Traveled] within five years. With so much induced traffic, adding road capacitydoes little to reduce congestion. . . " Mark Hansen, "Do New Highways GenerateTraffic?", Access, No. 7, Fall, 1995, pp. 20, 22

• "Transportation planners are well aware of cases where highway improvementsprojected to accommodate fifteen years of traffic growth are choked with congestionin far less time." David Lewis and Fred Laurence Williams, Policy and Planning asPublic Choice: Mass Transit in the United States, Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 1999, pp.206-207

• "In fact, an expansion of 1 percent to an existing capacity of 1,000 lanemiles. . . would reduce (congestion) by one-eleventh of a percent on freeways, one-sixth of a percent on principal arterials, one-fourth of a percent on minor arterials,and one-third of a percent on collectors." Xuehao Chu, "Highway Capacity andAreawide Congestion," paper presented at the Transportation Research Board 79th

Annual Meeting, January, 2000, Washington, DC, p. 10

Similarly, one study after another shows that high quality transit, especially rail transit,can reduce congestion.

• After the September, 1998 opening of the Westside line of MAX, Portland, Oregon'sLight Rail System, "Transit's share of westbound trips leaving downtown on majorroads during the afternoon rush hour increased by 5 percentage points. . . from 11percent in May 1993 to 16 percent in May 1999. This increase represents nearly allof the 5.5 percent increase in afternoon rush hour trips (emphasis added). OnSunset Highway, transit's share of westbound trips leaving downtown Portland duringthe afternoon rush hour increased from 13 to 20 percent while drive alone trips

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declined from 60 to 55 percent." Westside Corridor Travel Study ExecutiveSummary -- May 1999, Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon

• The Texas Transportation Institute's 1999 Annual Urban Mobility Study shows thatthe greatest increases in congestion have been in areas that do not have rail transit."Table 3, Travel Rate Index" ranks 68 urban areas by percent increase in "PeakPeriod Travel Time Penalty," in the short term from 1992 to 1997 and in the longterm from 1982 to 1997. Only 2 of the 10 areas with the greatest "Peak Period TimePenalty" short term increase had rail transit service at that time, the other 8 did not. For long-term congestion increases rail cities fared even better. Only 1 of the 13areas experiencing the greatest increase had rail transit service, the other 12 did not. David Schrank and Tim Lomax, 1999 Annual Urban Mobility Study, TexasTransportation Institute, 1999, Table 3

• "The results of this study suggest a relationship in which 1 mile of transit travel . . .substitutes for 5.4 to 7.5 miles of travel in automobiles. Newman and Kenworthyhave suggested a relationship of 3.5 kilometers of automobile travel for 1 kilometerof transit travel and Holtzclaw found relationships in which 1 mile of transit travelreplaced from 4 to 8 miles of automobile travel." John W. Neff, "Travel DistanceSubstitution Rates Between Automobile Users and Transit Passengers," Papers andProceedings of the Applied Geography Conferences, Vol. 19, 1996, pp. 117-124

Of course, cities that continue to grow while still mandating the separation of housing,employment and shopping may generate so many new trips that total congestionincreases despite the addition of rail transit. But rail transit still reduces the rate at whichcongestion increases, because most trips on rail represent a car removed from traffic.If the rail line were not built, highway congestion would be even worse.

And what about the myth that a rail transit line has less capacity than a single lane offreeway or even a major arterial road? The facts are clear enough:

The basic problem with urban/suburban freeways is that they take up somuch space for the capacity they deliver. At 1500 cars per lane per hour,a six lane freeway's maximum capacity is about 11,000 people perhour. . . within a 300 foot right of way. Urban rail systems can deliver asmuch or more capacity in 100 foot or less of [right of way]. The Dallaslight rail line when completed to Garland and Richardson will be able todeliver at least 20% more hourly capacity than a six lane freeway (13760people per hour) at 14% less capital cost per mile. Heavy rail systems likethe Washington Metrorail have five times the capacity of a six lanefreeway in about one third the space and cost about the same per mile asthe Century Freeway in Los Angeles.14

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So how do the anti-transit troubadours say that Light Rail carries fewer people than evena modest two-lane road? Why, they just compare what Light Rail lines do actually carrywith what a highway could carry, if it were jammed to its maximum capacity 24 hours aday! Many of their tunes, it seems, sing of apples and oranges, artfully but not honestlycompared.

Myth Number Five: Where transit is needed, buses are better than rail. Busescost less and provide the same or better service.

Again, let's hear it from the horse's, er, mouth:

• "Another problem with light rail is that, unlike bus service, it is inflexible. Bus routescan be changed overnight, if needed, to respond to changes in demand anddevelopment. A change in a light rail route takes months and hundreds of millionsof dollars to remove the tracks and re-lay them on a new route." -- Daniel Simmons,Randy T. Simmons and Samuel R. Staley, Growth Issues in Utah: The Facts,Fallacies, and Recommendations for Quality Growth, Sutherland Institute, October,1999, p. 33

• "Studies in Los Angeles have shown that overall travel times on rail transit are longerthan the same trips on the old bus routes, by factors of up to 100 percent. . . Bustrips also had significantly lower fares, required fewer transfers, and had shorterheadways. Buses operated for longer periods of the day and on weekends andholidays, and offered more convenient access. . . Given the choice, most of theseriders would prefer to continue to take the bus." -- James V. DeLong, Myths of LightRail Transit, Reason Public Policy Institute, September, 1998, p. 5-6

• "Bus corridors consist of parallel bus lines collectively providing higher capacity thanrail lines. . . Light rail lines cannot deliver more than a small fraction of the carryingcapacity provided by dedicated bus rights-of-way." -- Thomas A. Rubin and JamesE. Moore II, Ten Transit Myths: Misperceptions About Rail Transit in Los Angelesand the Nation, Reason Foundation, November, 1996, Executive Summary

Imagine a fruit wholesalers convention where a speaker, three sheets to the wind onhard cider, holds up an apple and an orange and exclaims, "Everybody should buyoranges, not apples. Why, this orange produces twenty times as much juice as thisapple!" To which a sober farmer replies, "It makes no sense to compare completelydifferent fruits. Comparing apples and oranges is as dumb as comparing buses and railtransit."

Buses and rail transit are at least as different as apples and oranges. With a fewexceptions, they serve different purposes and different people -- so different that it maybe more of a hindrance than a help to lump them together as "public transit."

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In general, buses serve the purpose of providing mobility to people who have no car orcannot drive -- the transit dependent. Rail transit serves the purpose of reducing trafficby drawing to transit riders from choice, people who have cars and can drive if theychoose to do so.

There are, of course, some exceptions. The New York City Subway serves everyone.Ridership on Los Angeles's Light Rail Blue Line is 89% minority, which generally meanstransit dependent. Houston and Ottawa have had some success in drawing riders fromchoice onto express buses, and in St. Louis, when Light Rail opened, bus ridership alsorose as former auto commuters took local buses to the train stations.

But these remain exceptions. More typical is Seattle. When buses were temporarilysubstituted for the 1930s-built streetcars on that city's Waterfront line, ridership droppedto one-fifteenth of what it had been on the trolleys.15 PATCO, a 14-mile rail transit lineserving Philadelphia's middle class New Jersey suburbs, carries 40,000 daily riders; inthe same area, seventeen bus lines with 28 branches, totaling 563 route miles, drawonly 30,000.16 One study showed that when Light Rail replaced buses on the sameroute or in the same transit corridor, ridership usually increased by over 100%. Anotherstudy demonstrated that when buses replaced rail transit, ridership declined by between34% and 43%.17

The differences between bus riders and rail transit riders were dramaticallydemonstrated in a comparative survey of both done in St. Louis in 1993, shortly afterLight Rail opened in that city.

• Among bus riders, 70% said they used the bus because they did notdrive or had no car available. For train riders, the figure was 17%.

• 11% of train riders took the train because it was faster than driving,and 13% because it was more relaxing; for bus riders, the figures were3% and 2%.

• 84% of train riders rated service as excellent or good, compared to57% of bus riders.

• 40% of bus riders owned no car, and 28% had two or more cars. Only8% of train riders had no car, and 68% had two or more cars.

• 48% of bus riders live in the inner city, compared to 14% of train riders.• 57% of bus riders have annual household incomes of less than

$20,000, compared to 21% of train riders. Only 6% of bus riders haveincomes of over $45,000, compared to 38% of train riders.18

For the 40% of bus passengers who have no car, the bus is their only way to getaround. That is true of only 8% of train riders. But the 68% of train riders who have twoor more cars would presumably drive if there were no train, so for them, the social

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purpose of rail transit is to reduce traffic. In fact, 68% may be too low; the same surveyfound that before the Light Rail line opened, 79% of rail riders did not use transit at all.

So we see that the differences between bus and rail are if anything greater than thosedistinguishing apples and oranges; comparing bus and rail as if they wereinterchangeable is more like comparing, say, aardvarks and kumquats. So why do theanti-transit troubadours always tell us to stick with buses and not build rail? Well, if theobjective is to keep people in their cars, that is a pretty good prescription.

Let's look at a few of the transit critics' more specific objections to rail:

• They contend that buses are more "flexible" because bus routes can be movedvirtually overnight while train tracks are fixed in place. This is true. But it turns outto be one of the advantages of rail, not a disadvantage. One of the more importantpurposes of any infrastructure is to spur and channel development. Bus transit hasno effect on development, precisely because of its here today and gone tomorrow"flexibility." No developer can count on its being there once his building iscompleted. Rail transit, on the other hand, is a major spur to development, becauseonce it is there, it is there for the long term. A developer may buy land, erect abuilding and get tenants, knowing that those tenants will still have rail transit servicenext week, next month, next year and next decade.

• The critics also claim that buses cost less than rail. This is true of capital costs, butnot of operating costs. In St. Louis, Light Rail had an operating cost per passengermile in FY 1995 of 224 compared to 684 for buses, a cost per passenger trip of$1.18 compared to $2.31 for buses, and a farebox recovery ratio (FY 1997) of 41.8%compared to 20.3% for buses.19 In Portland, Oregon, the operating cost per boardingpassenger is $1.67 for buses, $1.40 for Light Rail.20 In Dallas, the operating cost perpassenger mile of the DART Light Rail system is just 60% of that of buses.21 On anationwide basis, the latest figures, from the Federal Transit Administration 1999National Transit Database, show the operating cost of Light Rail as 454 perpassenger mile, compared to 554 for buses.

• Another assertion by the critics is that buses on dedicated rights-of-way -- buswaysor HOV lanes -- are better than Light Rail. In actual experience, buses on buswaysdo not compete effectively with rail transit, at least in the minds of potential riders. Former Deputy Secretary of Transportation for Pennsylvania E.L. Tennyson hascompared the two modes over the years. He writes:

In 1970, the Shirley Busway was opened on I-95 in Northern Virginia toserve the Pentagon and Washington, D.C. Transit use jumpedexponentially when frequent service replaced three slower trips per day. . .but ridership has declined by seventy percent since the Second EnergyCrisis. Then rail service was established at a higher fare on a slightly

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slower schedule. Ridership jumped 450 percent in a year, at a loweroperating cost per passenger-mile. In 1986, when Metrorail replacedexpress buses on I-66 HOV lanes, transit use increased almost 900percent over several years. . .I was Deputy Secretary of Transportation for Pennsylvania and signedover the funding for the South Busway (in Pittsburgh), with a promise of35,000 weekday passengers. At the height of the Second Energy Crisis,we got 20,000, but it has fallen since then to lower than pre-busway. Ottawa (Canada) has had a similar experience.In sharp contrast, San Diego eliminated Express Bus Route 100 andconverted trunk Route 32 to Light Rail. Over time, ridership has risenfrom 12,000 with buses to 28,000 or more by rail, at an operating cost ofonly 17 cents per passenger-mile (1998). Bus cost in San Diego was 38cents. . . 22

In one city after another, Light Rail has shown that it can draw a great many riders fromchoice who would never board a bus. The same is true for commuter rail, as weshowed in our look at Chicago's Metra system in our first study.23 The anti-transittroubadours dislike rail transit not because it doesn't work, but because it does.

Myth Number Six: Rail transit can only serve city centers, but most new jobs arein the suburbs.

Again, let's let the critics speak for themselves:

• "How did things go so wrong for the planners' vision of what rail could do? Railtransit was appropriate to the highly concentrated and dense cities of the 19th andearly 20th centuries. As cities spread out and as downtowns became lessprominent, rail transit's traditional markets nearly disappeared. . . In the informationage, the suburbanization of jobs and housing is ever accelerating, stronglysuggesting that there are no prospects for a return to 19th century conditions." --Peter Gordon, A Transit Plan for Hillsborough County: A Reality Check, ReasonPublic Policy Institute, June, 1998, p. 6

• "With regards to attracting commuters from automobiles, transit agencies haveeffectively served only one destination -- downtown. Downtown transit work tripmarket shares can be very high -- in four downtown areas more than 50 percent ofemployees use transit to get to work, and nine downtown areas have transit work tripmarket shares of 30 percent or more. Downtowns, however, are not the dominantemployment centers that they once were. On average, downtown areas contain nomore than 10 percent of employment in major metropolitan areas -- more than 90

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percent of metropolitan employment is now outside downtown." -- Wendell Cox, The1999 Texas Transit Opportunity Analysis: Metropolitan Transit Authority of HarrisCounty ("Metro") Ill-advised, Texas Public Policy Foundation, 1999, Part 2, p. 2

• "It is also a mistake to assume that there are identifiable 'commuting corridors' thataccommodate most of the job-related trips. Increasingly, people live in one suburband work in another; they do not go from a suburb down a corridor to a centraldowntown. . . The 'commuting corridors' concept, which assumes a downtownemployment core surrounded by suburbs, is hopelessly out of date." -- James V.DeLong, Myths of Light Rail Transit, Reason Public Policy Institute, September,1998, p.11

This anti-transit myth is a bit different from the others, because the problem itself is nota myth. The myth is that the problem has no solution.

Downtowns remain important centers of employment in most regions, and even WendellCox admits (at least in the above quote) that transit serves downtowns well. But it isalso true that much job growth is in the suburbs.

An excellent new study sponsored by the Transportation Research Board, Guidelinesfor Enhancing Suburban Mobility Using Public Transportation, well describes thechallenge facing mass transit:

Improving suburban mobility is a difficult national challenge. For transit,the problem is particularly acute. Networks historically have beendesigned to serve downtowns and concentrated urban centers. Many areill-suited for serving the lower density and dispersed travel patternscharacteristic of suburban patterns of development. . .Average residential and employment densities today are not only muchlower than a decade or more ago, but trip origins and destinations are alsofar more spread out. Nationwide, the share of work trips both beginningand ending in the suburbs, for instance, increased from 38 percent in1970 to 52 percent in 1990. Traditional commuting paths are beingreplaced by a patchwork of radial, crosstown, lateral, and reverse-directiontravel. Increasingly, there is a mismatch between the geometry oftraditional highway, bus, and rail networks, which mostly follow a hub-and-spoke pattern, and the geography of commuting, which seemingly movesin all directions.24

Unlike the anti-transit troubadours, the Transportation Research Board does notrespond to the challenge with lamentations. The very title of the study emphasizes"enhancing suburban mobility using public transportation." There are solutions, and railtransit has an important role to play in them.

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One solution stems from the nature of much suburban job development. It is not alwaysspread out evenly across the map. Rather, it often follows certain corridors -- corridorsthat can be served effectively by rail.

Portland, Oregon, offers an example. There, job growth has been concentrated in acorridor on Portland's west side. The TRB study notes that, "During the 1980s, itaccounted for two-thirds of population growth and 96 percent of employment growth inthe Portland metropolitan area." 25 How did Portland choose to serve this suburbangrowth? Instead of building a planned west-side freeway, it built Westside MAX, anextension of the Light Rail System.

Did it work? Passenger Transport reported on September 25, 2000, Westside MAX'stwo-year anniversary,

Daily ridership on Westside MAX exceeded the 25,200 rides estimated for2005 after only 17 months of operation, and the system's popularity isgrowing. Daily ridership jumped 18 percent during the last quarter ofFiscal Year 2000 compared to the fourth quarter of FY 1999, reaching28,200 weekday rides in June.The success of Westside MAX depended on more than installing traintracks. Tri-Met also reorganized bus routes in the corridor in conjunctionwith opening the MAX line, and in turn improved their on-timeperformance. When MAX opened, it and bus service increased 46percent in the corridor, and the response has been terrific. The numberof transit trips rose 145 percent; rush-hour transit trips in the westerncorridor from downtown Portland increased 5 percent while drive-aloneauto trips declined 3 percent; and transit's share of reverse morningcommutes more than doubled since 1997.26

Rail transit can do more than serve corridors where job growth is concentrated. It canalso help create such corridors. For decades, European urban planners have used railtransit lines to shape growth. By building rail lines into areas where open space existsbut growth is wanted, growth -- job and residential -- is drawn in. In fact, that is how LosAngeles developed, along the lines of the Pacific Electric's famous Red Cars.

A major reason why rail transit has difficulty serving suburban growth in many Americancities is that there just isn't enough of it. A single Light Rail line can only serve a limitedarea. But if a rail system is large enough, it serves much more than the downtown.Washington's Metrorail is an example: this five-line, 103-mile system serves not onlydowntown Washington, DC, but also such major employment centers as Crystal City,the Pentagon and Rosslyn, Virginia and Bethesda and Silver Spring, Maryland.

As the TRB study makes clear, rail serves a vital function in providing transit tosuburban job growth areas, the function of providing a fast, high quality "spine line"transit trip. The question then becomes, how can public transit provide an effective

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"distributor" function, taking people from the suburban rail station to their jobs? Thisquestion, too, has answers.

Perhaps the best answer is shuttles. Unlike regular bus services, shuttles run directlyfrom the rail station to the place of employment. Often they are vans provided by theemployers. The TRB study notes:

By creating this link in the network, transit becomes a more attractive andviable alternative to the single-occupant automobile for choice riders andprovides mobility and increased employment opportunities for transitdependents. . . as such, the travel time and cost characteristics need tobe tailored to be competitive with automobile travel times and cost.27

The study goes on to provide a number of examples of successful shuttles. One runsfrom the Walnut Creek station on San Francisco's BART Heavy Rail system to theBishop Ranch Business Park, a major employer. The TRB study states:

CalTrans joined with the Sunset Development Corporation (the owner ofBishop Ranch) to sponsor the 960 Express Shuttle. Employees of BishopRanch ride free by displaying an identification badge, and the generalpublic pays a $1.25 fare. The 960 Express Shuttle's fixed-routepredecessor carried only 6.7 passengers per hour. In late-1995, theExpress Shuttle averaged 15.8 passengers per revenue hour. Its monthlyridership jumped from 2,200 passengers in February 1995 to 6,000 6months later. On some mornings, the load factor approaches 1.5.28

Guidelines for Enhancing Suburban Mobility Using Public Transportation offers manyother solutions to the challenge posed by suburban job dispersion. And that is our point:there are solutions. The solution must be appropriate to the specific situation; this is nota case where one size fits all. But in many situations, rail does have a key role to play,the role of providing a speedy, comfortable, high quality "spine line" trip that makestransit competitive with the private automobile. Serving suburban job destinationsrequires not fewer rail lines, but more.

Myth Number Seven: Rail Transit does not spur economic development.

In their own words, the anti-transit troubadours have said:

• "Local proponents of light rail suggest that it can be used to drive what they perceiveto be desirable development patterns in the area. Light rail's impact on developmenthas been minuscule around the nation." -- Thomas A. Rubin and Wendell Cox,

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Trolley Folly: A Critical Analysis of the Austin Light Rail Proposal, Texas PublicPolicy Foundation, September, 2000, p. 11

• "If new urban rail were able to reshape city development, it would be expected thatdowntowns in new rail cities would have lower office vacancy rates than in othercities. . . Yet the average downtown vacancy rate in new rail cities is more than halfagain higher than the average of other cities." -- Wendell Cox, Why Light RailDoesn't Work, Texas Public Policy Foundation, January, 2000, p. 33

• "It is likely that Dallas development induced by light rail will, as in other areas beforeit, be of a very localized rather than regional significance." -- Wendell Cox, Why LightRail Doesn't Work, Texas Public Policy Foundation, January, 2000, p. 36

This myth is an ironic one, because the wandering minstrels' favorite tune is "Buses nottrains," but it is rail transit, not bus service, that spurs economic development. Thereason is simple. Bus service can change overnight. A bus route can be discontinuedor re-routed easily. No developer can invest on the basis of something so ephemeral.A rail line, in contrast, is a fixed, high-value asset. It cannot get up and move, and theamount of capital invested in it makes service discontinuance highly unlikely. Adeveloper can invest in, say, a new office building near a rail transit line in confidencethat twenty years from now, the rail line will still be there providing transit service. Theasset that service represents to the developer will not vanish overnight.

And the asset of rail transit service is very real. In one city after another, rail transit --Heavy Rail, Light Rail or commuter rail -- has brought increased investment, higherproperty values, higher rents and more customers.

In our first study, Conservatives and Mass Transit: Is It Time for a New Look?, weoffered Washington, D.C.'s Metrorail system as an example of rail transit spurringdevelopment -- specifically, development in northern Virginia. Two different studiesclearly showed Metrorail's substantial impact:

Average office rents near stations rose with systemwide ridership; jointdevelopment projects added more than three dollars per gross square footto annual office rents. Office vacancy rates were lower, average buildingdensities higher, and shares of regional growth larger in station areas withjoint development projects. . . -- Robert Cervero, "Rail Transit and JointDevelopment: Land Market Impacts in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta,"Journal of the American Planning Association, Winter 1994, p. 83

Since 1977, when the first Metrorail station opened in Virginia, Metrorailhas generated substantial economic benefits for the Commonwealth. By2010, Metrorail will generate:• $2.1 billion in additional Commonwealth revenues

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• Development projects totaling:25 million additional square feet of office space1.8 million additional square feet of retail space4,000 additional hotel rooms31,000 additional residential units

• Permanent employment in the Commonwealth totaling: 86,000 additional office jobs

1,500 additional retail jobs3,500 additional hotel jobs

• Net revenues of $1.2 billion (revenues in excess of Commonwealthcontributions to Metrorail)

• Annual additional Commonwealth tax revenues amounting to threetimes the annual Commonwealth contribution

-- KPMG Peat Marwick, Fiscal Impact of Metrorail on The Commonwealthof Virginia, November, 1994

The Peat Marwick study goes on to quote several northern Virginia businessmen aboutMetrorail's effects on their businesses:

• "We simply would not have developed the Montebello community ofover 1,000 units on Route 1 had it not been for the adjacent Metrorailstation." -- Giuseppe Cecchi, President of IDI Group Companies

• "One of the primary factors in our decision to invest substantial capitalin the development of Colonial Place was the commitment of the stateand local governments to Metro. The proximity to Metro has enhancedour ability to consistently attract and retain quality tenants andmaintain full occupancy in our buildings." -- James C. Cleveland,President of Mobil Land Development Corporation

• "The ability of both daytime travelers and weekend shoppers to useMetrorail to get to the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City has had adramatic impact on our success." -- James P. Lee, Senior VicePresident of Simon Property Group 29

Washington's Metrorail is a Heavy Rail system; what of the effect of Light Rail ondevelopment? St. Louis and Dallas offer examples, and both point to the sameconclusion: Light Rail can have a strong and positive impact on development.

St. Louis's MetroLink Light Rail system opened in 1993. A study by the Bi-StateDevelopment Agency states:

Fueled by high ridership and touted for its convenience and accessibilityto premier attractions, employment, educational, medical and recreationalcenters in the area, MetroLink, the St. Louis region's light rail system hasbeen lauded as a catalyst for economic development. . .

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Locations within walking distance of MetroLink stations have become hotcommodities for potential businesses. Local real estate managers reportpotential renters and buyers are showing more interest in property withinthe vicinity of MetroLink. Additional occupancy rates in apartments nearMetroLink stations have grown.Existing businesses are benefiting from the new transportation systemtoo. St. Louis' downtown shopping malls report increased pedestriantraffic since MetroLink opened in July, 1993. Shops and restaurantmanagers within these malls have also reported an increase in sales.Economic development planners say solid change near MetroLink stationsis imminent. In years to come, abandoned land will sport new shops,convenience stores and office buildings.30

If Light Rail was going to fail anywhere, Dallas would have seemed the place. After all,Texans were wedded to their cars, and only the poorest used public transit. Ourvagabond minstrels cheerily predicted that Dallas's DART Light Rail system would runempty trains.

As usual, they were wrong. Since DART opened in 1996 -- on time and within budget-- it has carried more riders than projected: 42,000 per weekday by the latest count.And it has had an immediate and positive effect on development. DART BoardChairman Jesse D. Oliver recently wrote:

Developers are building on the success of DART's $860-million light railsystem with more than $800 million in ongoing or planned projects nearthe stations -- those already built, and those opening in the near future. That's almost a dollar-for-dollar return on this public investment in justfour years. I know of no other transit system in America that hasgenerated so much economic activity so quickly.31

A study by Drs. Bernard L. Weinstein and Terry L. Clower of the University of NorthTexas put some numbers to the effects of DART on development and business. Theirresearch found that properties adjoining DART Light Rail stations grew 25 percent morein value than similar properties not served by rail transit. Average occupancies forClass A buildings near the Light Rail line increased from 80% in 1994 to 88.5% in 1998,while average rents rose from $15.60 per square foot to $23. Strip mall owners nearDART stations had a 49.5% gain in occupancy and a 64.8% rise in rent rates. Thestudy states, "Proximity to DART light rail stations appears to be a plus for most classesof real estate, especially Class A and C office buildings and strip retail."32

DART's Light Rail line is also drawing middle and upper-middle class people back intoDallas's downtown as residents. Local developer Ken Hughes is the man behind a high-density development of 250 high-end apartments at DART's Mockingbird Station. Hesays, "I take people over to Mockingbird Station and show them the BMWs and Volvosparked there; these people are using mass transit because they like it."33

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Rail transit benefits individual homeowners, not just developers and businessmen, byraising the value of existing homes. A study of the effect of San Francisco's BART railsystem on property values in the suburb of Pleasant Hills found that:

BART station proximity is a key determinant of property values in PleasantHill. The research shows that single family homeowners are willing to pay,on average, nearly $16 in home price for each foot closer to BART withinthe study area. . . Alternatively, homeowners are willing to pay nearly $8in home price for every foot further from the freeway interchange nearestthe study area. . . The value of an average single family home in thePleasant Hill Station Area is $22,767 greater due to its proximity to BART. For the 939 single family homes within a 1 mile radius of this station, thenet property value impact is $21.4 million.34

Edward A. Reusing, President of Downtown St. Louis, Inc., summed it up best. Havingseen for just two years what Light Rail did for that city, he said in January of 1995,"Extending MetroLink and the bus system which feeds it is the smartest economicdevelopment step St. Louis can take."35 When the anti-transit troubadours sing that railtransit has no effect on economic development, it's time to start heaving old shoes anddead cats.

Myth Number Eight: Transit brings crime into a community.

Quite rightly, Americans fear crime and want to do everything they can to keep it awayfrom their families, homes and neighborhoods. As conservatives, we know a good, old-fashioned solution to the crime problem: If you hang a thief when he's young, he won'tsteal when he's old. But until the happy day comes when the old truths are restored,Americans will have to fear crime and do their best to flee it.

Needless to say, the danger of crime is too good a theme for transit critics to ignore. But this myth is a bit different from the others, because it is local people who usuallyraise the issue. They do so honestly, because they are scared. We understand thatfear. Let's hear it in their own words:

• "During the time that light rail was proposed, built, and launched in San Jose,California, my wife and I lived less than a mile from the downtown route. Proponentsof the system there used the same arguments and reassurances then as proponentsof an Austin system do today. Only the positive aspects were presented. No oneseemed to think about the dark side of 'if you build it, they will come.' By the 'darkside' in this case I refer to a criminal class. Most of the passengers will be good

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people. . . 'They' will regard it as a hunting ground." -- Woody Edmiston, "TheCriminal Side of Light Rail," The Austin Review, December 16, 1999

• "Light Rail has been linked to the increase in CRIME, both at the stations that servethe communities, and in the neighborhoods themselves. In Baltimore andPhiladelphia, crime rates rose as a result of mass transit intrusions intoneighborhood communities. We have no way of forecasting what impact it may haveon our neighborhoods, but experience teaches that what has happened elsewherewill probably happen here as well." -- "Tracks, Lies and Videotape," Orlando, Florida,Ax The Tax, November 3, 1999

As the two statements indicate, we face not one question, but two: crime on transit, andcrime brought into a community by transit. What is the evidence?

As soon as we ask that question, we encounter our first problem: the evidence is thin.As a 1997 Transportation Research Board study, Improving Transit Security, states,"The dimensions of transit crime in the United States are not currently subject to reliableassessment. . . Only recently have efforts begun to compile a national database."36 Atpresent, we simply do not have the information to answer either of our two questionsdefinitively on a national basis.

However, the data on crime on transit is better, so let's look at it first. The TRB study,Improving Transit Security, goes on to say that:

Data that are available, using Uniform Crime Report (UCR) classifications,suggest that transit crime is of a less serious nature although seriouscrime does occur regularly. Disorderly conduct, public drunkenness, fareevasion, theft, and simple assaults appear to be the five most frequentlyoccurring offenses. . . As would be expected, serious and violent crime ismore characteristic of larger transit systems, measured both by statisticalincidence and crime per passenger trip.37

Both of the basic facts given here are almost certainly relevant to the rail transit lineproposed for your community. First, serious and violent crime is less likely thanstatistical averages might suggest, because most of that kind of crime occurs in thebiggest cities.

Second, most of the crime your system may face will be of a "less serious nature." What, exactly, does that mean? Another study, the Transit Security Handbook, dated1998, gives a detailed answer. That study states, "Quality of life and property crimesaccount for over 93 percent of all crimes on [rail transit systems]. Violent crime occursrelatively infrequently, accounting for only 6.6 percent of all [rail system] crime."38

In turn, 67.4% of the quality of life crime is disorderly conduct. That is followed bydrunkenness with 9.8%, trespassing at 7.5%, vandalism with 6.7%, drug abuse

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violations at 4.8% and loitering with 2%.39 Quality of life crimes are serious for a transitsystem, because they drive patrons away. But they do not result in physical injury totransit riders.

The study makes another important point relevant to your community: "Heavy railsystems have the largest number of disorderly conduct crimes, significantly higher thanthe rate experienced on other [rail systems]."40 The rail transit system proposed for yourcommunity is almost certainly Light Rail or commuter rail, not Heavy Rail.

The other component of our 93% of all crime on rail systems is property crime. 81% ofthat, in turn, is fare evasion.41 Fare evasion is a problem for the transit authority, but itdoes not directly threaten transit riders. Of property crimes that do threaten riders, thestudy notes, "Rates for burglary, arson, and motor vehicle theft are low across all [rail]systems."42

And what of the crime everyone fears, violent crime directed against transit riders? Thestudy concludes:

(Rail transit) violent crime occurrences, when compared to municipalviolent crime, are minimal. For example, in 1995, the city of Los Angelesexperienced more violent crime in a two month period than all affected[rail transit systems]. . . during the entire year. . . rates of violent crime inthe transit environment are considerably lower than rates in the municipalareas served by [rail transit].43

A survey of riders on the San Diego Trolley adds perspective to the data, because it letsrail transit patrons speak for themselves. A 1992 survey found that:

Safety on board the trolley was rated by 89 percent as either good oraverage. Security at stations and security in station parking lots are ratedthe lowest, with 78 and 77 percent rating those characteristics either goodor average, respectively.44

Even the lowest numbers are in the high 70s, which is good for security in urban areas.

In 1993, a similar survey of San Diego Trolley riders found an interesting differencebetween the perceptions of those who actually use the trolley and those who do not.

Trolley riders' perception of safety on board and at trolley stations ishigher than that of the general public. . . Respondents who have usedpublic transit in the last year are much more likely to rate on board thetrolley as safe (75 percent of users versus 48.1 percent of non-users).45

This suggests that, at least in San Diego, the issue of crime on board Light Rail is aproblem of perception rather than a reality.

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In summary, serious crime on rail transit systems is uncommon. This is true even onLight Rail systems such Los Angeles's Blue Line, which goes through Watts. Fareevasion and disorderly conduct can be problems, unless the transit authority has a pro-active policy toward crime. But those crimes, while damaging to transit, do notphysically threaten ordinary transit riders. To the degree the data allow us to know,there does not appear to be any Light Rail system in North America where a patronneed fear for his physical safety.

What about our second question? Does rail transit bring crime into a community? Here,unfortunately, the data situation is worse. We know of no studies done on a nationwidebasis. As one of the studies of a specific line (Baltimore's Metro) says at the outset:

A research gap exists in the study of crime specific to neighborhoodsadjacent to transit stations. A body of data is available listing crime inthose neighborhoods, but. . . the crime occurrences are tallied withoutconcern as to how the offender traveled to his. . . destination.46

Not surprisingly, the study is unable to draw much in the way of conclusions. Regardingthis Heavy Rail line, the author states:

A review of the crime statistics gathered for 3 years before Metro'sopening of Section B and 3 years after indicates that reported crime is onan upward, though erratic, trend in Baltimore County near these transitstations for most of the major categories. But it is also true that similarupward trends are true for the county in general. . . Whether increases incrime in the neighborhoods of this study can be attributed directly to theaddition of a transit station cannot be determined with the data available.47

Another Baltimore study is more useful. "Crime on Maryland Mass TransitAdministration Light Rail Line: Myth or Reality?,” reports what was a genuine crisisalong Baltimore's then-new Light Rail system:

By early spring 1994, there was evidence to suggest that the criminalelement might be riding the rails in search of new markets. Merchantsroutinely reported that shoplifting was increasing at an alarming rate; infact, shoplifting reportedly increased by 237 percent in one shoppingcenter in northern Baltimore County, according to county police.Citizens in certain communities began to report the disappearance ofpersonal property such as bicycles and lawn equipment. One citizenproclaimed, "I've had things stolen off my front porch.". . .Emotions were running high. It no longer mattered whether crime alongthe [Light Rail line] was a myth or reality. People believed that crime wasrampant, and various citizens groups were calling for swift correctiveaction.48

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The key to the situation here was that citizens did exactly the right thing, whenever crimerears its head: they organized and demanded action to stop it. And they got what theywanted. The MTA, working with local police departments, put together an aggressiveand proactive policy to stop crime on and around the Light Rail Line.

Today, incidents of reported crime are down by 93 percent throughout theentire [Light Rail] system. . . reported crime figures before and after theformulation of the community outreach program, security task force, andregularly scheduled community meetings show a sharp contrast. Obviously, increased criminal activity in residential and businesscommunities adjacent to the [Light Rail Line] was a reality.Historically, there have always been those who are not timid aboutavailing themselves of the fruits of someone else's labor. . . the same typeof individuals used the [Light Rail] service to reach locations that had beeninaccessible heretofore.It was inevitable that once all the concerned groups organized and beganto work together, the problem of increased criminal activity would besystematically eliminated.49

The San Diego study referenced earlier also looked at crime along the trolley line. Itnoted that:

The violent crime rate increased less in communities surrounding trolleystations than in the study area as a whole. The overall property crime ratedecreased more than in the study area. However, Phase 2 (of the study)identified a dramatic increase in crime within a 1/8-mile radius of trolleyloading platforms. Property crimes, most notably car theft, increased themost. (Since most stations were built on vacant land, any type ofdevelopment would be expected to increase the number of crimesoccurring there.)50

Finally, the transit authority responsible for the Light Rail line in San Jose, Californianoted in a short study that:

Records compiled by Valley Transportation Authority Security pertainingto light rail accidents and crime statistics support the conclusion thatsafety and security in neighborhoods are not significantly affected byimplementation of a light rail system.51

What can we conclude from all this? In our view, the conclusion is clear: rail transit cancreate a crime problem, both on-board and in neighboring communities, but it need notdo so.

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Unfortunately, in today's America, any new development can bring crime. It should notsurprise us that rail transit can do so. But as the study of crime on Baltimore's Light Railline shows, crime on and around rail transit lines can be stopped -- or better still,prevented before it happens.

The key is a proactive anti-crime program that includes the local transit authority, police,and businesses in and residents of areas the line will serve. A carefully designedprogram to stop crime before it starts should be part of the planning for the rail line itself.It should be up and running when service begins, so crime cannot gain a foothold. Ifsuch a program is not part of the total project, then citizens should withhold their supportfor the rail line until it is.

Nor is it enough to be proactive just against crime. Disorder is crime's forerunner, andtransit policy must include strong measures against disorder on rail cars and in oraround stations. A good example is radios with headphones where the user turns thevolume up until it fills half the car. Even if that technically meets a "no radios withoutheadphones" rule, it should not be permitted, because it is in fact a defiance of the rule.That individual is forcing his (usually wretched) taste in music on others. He should notbe allowed to do so.

Because the crime problem is different from city to city and neighborhood toneighborhood, we cannot say exactly what measures a local proactive anti-crime policyshould include. However, because fare evasion is a major component of crime ontransit systems, and widespread fare evasion tells criminals that the transit system maybe "friendly turf," we must question the now fashionable assumption that Light Railshould have an "honor" fare system and barrier-free entry. In some locales this maywork well. In others, it may not. When a Light Rail line is to serve relatively high crimeareas and populations, an honor fare system may not be appropriate. The requirementnot only to pay a fare but to pass through some sort of gateway while doing sounquestionably increases security -- as well as transit revenues. The honest, fare-paying passenger will welcome the turnstile, for what it keeps out.

We have devoted considerable length to the question of rail transit bringing crimebecause, as conservatives, we take crime seriously. We would oppose anydevelopment in our neighborhoods that would bring more crime, and we would expectyou to do the same. Rail transit need not, if planning includes security issues from theoutset.

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Myth Number Nine: Most Light Rail riders are former bus riders.

Again, let's start with some snatches from the troubadours own songs:

• "Worse still, the addition of a rail line [in Phoenix, Arizona] will likely draw theoverwhelming majority of its customers from existing bus routes. It is estimated that85 percent to 90 percent of the riders on the new 'Blue Line' rail transit corridor inLos Angeles were formerly bus passengers. Drawing the majority of its passengersfrom previous bus riders is a common outcome when new rail transit is introduced."-- John Semmens, Public Transit: A Worthwhile Investment?, Goldwater Institute,December, 1999, p. 21

• "In summary, no more than a third C usually about 20 percent C of light rail patronsare former occupants of an SOV (single occupant vehicle). Light rail has given atmost another 20 percent the chance to make a journey that they would not havemade before. The remaining 50 to 60 percent of riders come from othertransportation modes, usually the bus." -- Robert J. Franciosi, Light Rail in theValley: What Awaits Voters at the End of the Line, Goldwater Institute, February,2000, p. 6

• "Metro's (Washington, DC) new ridership has largely been taken from buses and carpool passengers." -- Wendell Cox, Why Light Rail Doesn't Work, Texas Public PolicyFoundation, January, 2000, p. 8

Here we see at work a common little trick the anti-transit minstrels use to tune theirsupple songs: picking one example and pretending it is typical. Los Angeles's BlueLine, cited by John Semmens, does draw comparatively heavily from former buspatrons, because the area it serves is populated largely by transit-dependent people.But it is an exception, not the rule. Most new light rail lines serve very differentpopulations and draw a far higher percentage of riders from people who used to drive.

Worse, Mr. Semmens also tunes his numbers. According to an on-board riders' surveydone in May, 1991, 54.9% of Blue Line passengers were former bus riders -- not 85 to90 percent.52 According to a 1998 survey, if the Blue Line were not available, 29% ofits riders would drive, and another 24% would be driven by a family member or friend-- meaning more than half of the light rail line's riders would be adding to trafficcongestion.53

And getting those people onto Light Rail benefits the taxpayers. In Los Angeles, theoperating cost of buses per passenger mile is $0.57, compared to $0.35 for Light Rail.So the critics are misleading on every point.

The fact of the matter is that Light Rail has been highly successful in drawing people outof their cars and onto transit. We already noted St. Louis MetroLink Light Rail as one

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example: a 1995 passenger survey found that 85% of rail riders had not previouslyused the bus. In fact, bus patronage in St. Louis rose rather than fell when the LightRail line opened. According to a Denver survey of Light Rail passengers, datedDecember 8, 2000, "For 50% of all Southwest Light Rail passengers surveyed, LightRail was replacing trips they would have made, at least partially, by driving alone."54

Another way to look at this myth is by comparing bus ridership with Light Rail ridershipin the same transit corridor. If most Light Rail riders come from buses, then ridershipshould not increase much when rail is substituted. But in fact, it usually does. SanDiego offers two good illustrations. On the corridor now served by the San Diego TrolleyOrange Line, bus ridership was just over 3,000 per weekday before rail was introduced.Now, on Light Rail, ridership in the same corridor is 18,000. Similarly, in the Blue Linecorridor, bus ridership was 400 peak hour passengers; with rail, it is 1,800.55 Those busriders would have to clone themselves in multiples to make up a majority of the peoplewho now ride the trains!

And what about the accusation that a high percentage of people drawn out of their carsby Light Rail actually came from carpools? A study devoted entirely to that question, "AComparison of Solo Drivers and Carpooler Modal Shift to New Rail Transit Lines," foundthat:

The average vehicle occupancies for riders of the rail transit systems aredisproportionately lower than would be expected. Using the unweightedaverage data for all surveys, the average vehicle occupancy for rail transitriders had been 1.22 when they traveled by private vehicle. The expectedvalue, however, is 1.45, the average vehicle occupancy for all privatevehicle users with the same mix of trip purposes.56

In other words, according to passenger surveys, fewer than average rail transit ridershad previously carpooled. Census data leads to the same result. The study concludes:

An analysis of data from rail transit system on-board passenger surveysand regression analyses of U.S. Census journey-to-work data indicate thatprivate vehicle travelers attracted to rail transit are disproportionatelydrawn from single occupancy vehicles.57

So the transit critics not only have their facts wrong, they have turned them upsidedown!

Light Rail's proven ability to draw riders from choice, people who would otherwise havedriven, usually alone, is important because it directly affects traffic congestion. Ridersfrom choice represent cars removed from traffic, usually in rush hours, on almost a one-to-one basis.

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But we should remember that offering rail transit to former bus passengers also has itsbenefits. Because rail transit represents high quality transit, those former buspassengers are less likely to leave transit and start driving if they get a car. Buses alsoclog up roads in rush hour, so substituting rail for bus helps reduce traffic congestion.And since, on a nationwide basis, Light Rail costs less to operate than buses, gettingpeople off buses and onto rail transit reduces the expense of transit to the taxpayer.

Myth Number Ten: Free market competition and privately operated transit isbetter.

As the troubadours put it:

• "Competition is one of the best ways to improve transit services." -- Randal O'Toole,Urban Transit Myths: Misperceptions About Transit and American Mobility, ReasonPublic Policy Institute, September, 1998, p. 18

• "Numerous studies demonstrate that contracting out leads to cost savings andincreased productivity in bus transit. Some reports indicate that contracted servicescan lower costs by 50 to 65 percent when compared with public agencies." --Anthony M. Rufolo and John A. Charles, Low-Cost Solutions to Portland's TrafficProblems: Congestion Pricing and Free-Market Transit, Policy Summary No. 105S,Cascade Policy Institute, March, 1998, p. 2

• "Competition within the transit market would benefit taxpayers and transit riders. Allpublic bus and rail services should be converted to competitive contracting as quicklyas possible. This could allow a combination of service expansions, fare reductions,and tax reductions." -- Wendell Cox, "Competition, Not Monopolies, Can ImprovePublic Transit," Backgrounder No. 1389, The Heritage Foundation, p. 2 of ExecutiveSummary

We agree. Where the free market and private enterprise can be introduced to publictransit, the public -- riders and taxpayers -- are likely to benefit.

The broadest opportunity for private enterprise lies in contracting out the operation ofbus systems. According to the 1997 National Transit Database, transit systems thatcontract out operation of some or all of their buses have a lower cost per passenger mile(404 vs. 554) and a slightly higher farebox recovery ratio (35.4% vs. 34.1%), althoughthey also have a slightly higher cost per passenger trip ($2.39 compared to $2.03). Astudy, "Does Contracting Transit Service Save Money?," concludes, "So, doescontracting save money? It depends. Transit services operated by private contractorsare not always less expensive or more efficient than services directly operated by transit

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agencies. . . In some cases, contracting for service may be the best way to achievecost-effective operations; in others the problems causing high costs are best addressedby other strategies."58 On balance, we're for it, both on a cost and a service qualitybasis.

However, as any honest free market economist will tell you, a free market demands alevel playing field. If we want fair competition between transit and private automobiles,we would first have to level a playing field that, at present, is all hills and valleys.

Public transit is subsidized. According to the APTA 2000 Public Transportation FactBook, in 1998, 65.7% of the expense of public transit -- operating and capital costs --came from the taxpayer. The rest was from fares and other earnings. In dollars, thetaxpayers' annual contribution was $17.12 billion.

But what about highways? In 1994, the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA)estimated that total social costs for motor vehicle users range from $2,155 billion to$2,937 billion, with user fees covering $1,716 billion to $1,930 billion. That meanshighways received an annual subsidy of between $439 billion and $1,007 billion -- thelatter figure being more than a trillion dollars.59

If we were to make transit and cars compete fairly, each would have to get the samesubsidy or no subsidy. In addition, the price paid directly by the automobile driver andthe transit rider would have to be paid the same way, so the payer could compare costs.It is not a level playing field if, for example, the fare every Light Rail rider pays onboarding the train includes the capital cost for the train itself, but the car owner onlyfaces a similar capital cost when he buys a new car. Men's minds working the way theydo, the car owner is not likely to remember that capital cost every time he gets the carout of his garage. Driving will seem cheaper than taking transit.

If there were a practical way to create a level playing field between transit andautomobiles, we'd be all for doing so and letting the best mode win. But so far no onehas found the magical mechanism -- magical because it would have to be retroactive,all the way back to the early 1920s, to make up for all those years when governmentsubsidized highways were destroying privately owned rail transit systems. In the worldas it is, with automobiles receiving heavy subsidies in a myriad of ways, transit, tocompete, will have to be subsidized as well.

Myth Number Eleven: On average, most of the seats on a bus or train are empty.

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The anti-transit troubadours usually sing this line only in passing, as a quick referenceto "empty buses" or "empty trains." But one of the wandering minstrels went on aboutit at some length, allowing us to hear the passage in full:

• "But isn't public transit good for the environment? Given the higher carrying capacityper bus or train, it would certainly seem that transit could provide someenvironmental benefits. The problem is the gap between theoretical capacity andactual ridership. Public transit is so inconvenient and unattractive that its actualridership falls far short of its theoretical capacity. Average load factors of 20 percentare typical. As a result, the energy efficiency of public transit doesn't seem to be anybetter than driving a car." -- John Semmens, Public Transit: A WorthwhileInvestment?, Goldwater Institute, December, 1999, p. 16

And how many seats are occupied in the average automobile? Even in rush hour, theanswer is usually one, out of four or five. During that same rush hour, if you look at theaverage bus or rail car, all the seats are taken and some passengers may be standing.

Here we see another little trick beloved by the anti-transit troubadours: taking anaverage that ignores rush hours, when it is the rush hours that are the problem (they dothe same thing when they announce that this or that city has no congestion problem,and base their conclusion on traffic volumes averaged over a twenty-four hour day).

Transit systems must be designed to handle rush hour volumes of people. They canand do adjust to some extent to non-rush hours, by running fewer buses or trains andperhaps shorter trains as well. But their ability to adjust is limited. A bus or rail car hasa fixed number of seats. Shortening or lengthening trains several times a day can costmore than is saved by running shorter trains. In most cities, bus drivers and trainoperators are paid for an eight-hour shift, whether they are working or not. And off-peakservice must be provided, for commuters who have to get home early, people who worknon-standard hours and the wide variety of non-commuting transit trips.

Table 2: Percent of Seats Filled by ModeVehicle Type Passenger Miles per

Vehicle Mile (Miles inRevenue Service for

Transit) (a)

Average SeatingCapacity

(b)

Percent of SeatsFilled on Average

Bus 10.3 42.2 24.3 %

Commuter Rail 36.0 127.6 28.2 %

Heavy Rail 22.4 55.6 40.2 %

Light Rail 26.3 60.1 43.8 %

All Private Vehicle Commuters 1.09 Assumed to be 5 21.8 %

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(a) Transit modes data for 1998 calculated from National Transit Database, Federal Transit Administration;private vehicle commuters from 1999 United States Census of Population.(b) Transit modes data from 1999 Transit Vehicle Data Book, American Public Transit Association.

If total ridership is averaged over the number of hours transit is provided, the averagemay appear low -- even though the trains and buses are full to bursting during themorning and afternoon rushes. But even if we compare averages, transit still comes outahead -- dramatically so, if we look at passenger miles per vehicle mile. Table 2 tellsthe real story.

Both Heavy and Light Rail fill double the percentage of seats that automobiles used incommuting fill, and generate twenty times as many passenger miles per vehicle mile.When you add in the fact that those rail cars are powered by electricity, how can thetroubadours wail that there is no effect on the environment? Maybe all those exhaustfumes have gotten to their brains. . .

Myth Number Twelve: It would be cheaper to lease or buy a new car for everyrider than to build a new light rail system.

This argument is a real eye-catcher, so the anti-transit troubadours use it at everyopportunity -- sometimes for commuter rail as well as light rail, and sometimes even forintercity rail. Let's hear it in their own words:

• "Moreover, light rail systems have proven to be excessively costly. The cost perattracted automobile driver averages more than $18,500 annually -- or nearly$750,000 over a 40 year career. This is considerably more than would be requiredto lease each attracted automobile driver a luxury automobile in perpetuity (retailprices of $30,000 to $65,000). It is 80 percent more than the average householdexpenditure on housing." Wendell Cox, The 1999 Texas Transit OpportunityAnalysis: Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County ("Metro") Ill-advised, TexasPublic Policy Foundation, 1999, Part 4, pp. 24-25

• "Rail transit is expensive. In fact, it would be cheaper to purchase new cars for railpassengers in Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati than to build expensive railsystems. . . New cars cost about 10.9 cents per mile to operate annually. Operatingcosts for mass transit, in contrast, are nearly six times as expensive in Cleveland(63.7 cents) and Columbus (66.5 cents) and four times as expensive in Cincinnati(39.9 cents)." -- If You Build It, Will They Ride?, Buckeye Institute for Public PolicySolutions, October, 1999, pp. 1-2

• "Finally, light rail is very expensive. With respect to virtually all new systems, it wouldhave been less expensive to lease each new commuter a car in perpetuity C in some

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cases, a luxury car, such as a Jaguar XJ8 or a BMW 740i." -- Wendell Cox, "Copingwith Traffic Congestion," in A Guide to Smart Growth: Shattering Myths, ProvidingSolutions, The Heritage Foundation, 2000, p. 46

This one is a real howler. To put it into perspective, a new BMW 740I goes for $62,900.APTA estimates that approximately 13,000,000 people use transit on a typical weekday.13,000,000 times $62,900 would be $817.7 billion -- almost half of the annual federalbudget.

To look at just Light Rail, let's turn again to one of our favorite examples, St. Louis. St.Louis's 18-mile MetroLink Light Rail line cost $450 million to construct. It carries about42,500 riders on an average weekday. On-board rider surveys indicate that about 80%of riders are new to transit -- they are "new commuters," in Mr. Cox's example. To buyeach of them a new BMW 740I would cost $1.1 billion -- about two and one-half timesas much as it cost to build MetroLink.

And that is only the beginning of what is wrong with this transit myth. Light Railequipment -- cars, tracks and wires -- is often in service for decades. In around fiveyears, all those BMWs are going to need replacing. You could easily need to spend that$1.1 billion four or five times before you need to spend $450 million to re-equipMetroLink (which in fact would cost less than the initial construction.) So now all thoseBMWs cost 10 to 13 times the capital cost of Light Rail.

Plus, the cost of MetroLink includes the cost of the road, or in its case the track. Veryfew BMWs come with their own road attached. So to the cost of the car must be addedthe cost of the roads to carry them, the parking spaces to hold them, the police to ticketthem when they are driven as BMWs are meant to be driven and the fire and rescuecrews to pry them open when they run into each other.

And there's the rub: one of Light Rail's benefits is that by getting people out of cars andonto transit, it reduces congestion. Obviously, if we all buy all the train riders new carsand shut down the railway, congestion will increase. So will accidents, time lost intraffic, frayed tempers and all the other joys that come with clogged rush hour roadways.And these too are costs.

We could go on. According to AAA, the total ownership and operating cost of a new caris 47.0 cents per mile, not the 10.9 cents given in the Buckeye Institute study.60 Sincethe people riding transit each day are not all the same, there would have to be a steadyflow of new BMWs, not just a one-time buy. Do the people who cannot drive also geta chauffeur with their BMW? And so forth.

This myth is perhaps the most obviously and blatantly false of the bunch. In that lies itsimportance. It reveals the technique of the anti-transit troubadours more clearly: tell abig fib fast, then get out of town before the truth can catch up to it. Maybe that's whythey seem so fond of BMWs. . .

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A Few More Myths. . .

While the twelve myths we have addressed are the "dirty dozen" most beloved by thetransit critics, they are not the only anti-transit myths floating around. You willoccasionally hear that "monorail is better than Light Rail," or "Light Rail is promoted byoverly low fares," or "trains are noisy." In this section, we take shorter looks at some ofthese myths, showing why they, too, are fictions.

A few more myths. . .

1. Transit subsidies exceed automobile subsidies.

• "Cars are subsidized at lower rates than public transit, especially rail. Whilesubsidies for rail and other forms of public transit routinely exceed two-thirds ofoperating costs, automobiles pay for two-thirds to 90% of their costs." -- If You BuildIt, Will They Ride?, Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, October, 1999, p.2

This is one of the more ironic arguments against transit, since what destroyed America'sonce-extensive electric railways -- streetcar systems and interurbans -- was governmentsubsidies to cars! The highway advocates, having driven privately-owned, tax paying railtransit out of business with massive subsidies to highway construction, now complainthat transit needs subsidies to compete. Well, duh, as a Generation Xer might say.

The argument also misstates the amount of subsidy to both transit and cars. Far fromcovering 90% of their costs, automobiles cover only 66% to 80%, based on the OTAstudy cited earlier.

Rail transit systems vary in the percentage of operating costs recovered from thefarebox. The San Diego Trolley covers about 70% of its expenses from the farebox,and Chicago's excellent Metra rail commuter system covers 49%, plus devoting 5% ofpassenger revenues to capital financing. In contrast, some rail systems barely cover10% of costs from the farebox. When that happens, someone should be taking a closelook at how the system is managed.

Interestingly, a recent book on public transit in America found that on a per capita basis,tax support for transit declined from 1980 to 1992 by a full one-third.61 So not only aremore people using transit, from the taxpayer's standpoint transit is also getting cheaper.

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A few more myths. . .

2. Increasing transit funding does not increase ridership.

• "There has been no relationship between transit funding and transit ridership.Despite huge increases in transit funding over the past two decades, ridership isstagnant or falling." -- Randal O'Toole, Urban Transit Myths: Misperceptions AboutTransit and American Mobility, Reason Public Policy Institute, September, 1998, p.8

Transit ridership has not been stagnant or falling. It has been rising steadily, year byyear, since 1995. Transit ridership is now higher than in any year since 1959, and in1999, transit use actually grew faster than highway use. At the same time, the transitoperating cost burden on the taxpayer has declined: since 1981, federal operatingsubsidies have fallen by $884 million, or 78%.

But the most important answer to this myth is local. In city after city, when funding hasbeen made available to create or expand rail transit, ridership has increased, oftenhugely. In the year after St. Louis opened its MetroLink Light Rail line, transit ridershipgrew 21 percent. Between 1986 and 1996, San Diego almost doubled the length of itsLight Rail system; transit ridership grew from about 35 million to around 62 million. Therelationship between transit funding and transit ridership is clear, strong and positive.If you build it, they will ride.

A few more myths. . .

3. Transit is not cost effective.

• "Overall productivity of the transit industry has been substantially poorer than thatof other passenger-transport industries. U.S. transit costs per passenger mile aresignificantly higher than any other mode. . . four to six times that of automobiles. .. " -- Wendell Cox, The 1999 Texas Transit Opportunity Analysis: MetropolitanTransit Authority of Harris County ("Metro") Ill-advised, Texas Public PolicyFoundation, 1999, Part 2, p. 3

In cities, cars are astonishingly cost-ineffective, especially when they are carrying justone person, during rush hours. Consider just one factor, the space required for all theroads and parking spaces they require. In most cities, urban real estate is highlyproductive. It is in demand for office buildings, factories, and high-rise residences, allof which generate a great deal of income and tax revenue per square foot of ground. Yethow many square feet -- indeed, square miles -- of that valuable real estate must be

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given over to moving and parking cars? Roads generate no revenue; instead, they costthe taxpayers money for construction and maintenance. Of course, when people likeMr. Cox make their calculations, they don't take any of this into account.

One recent study did look at such factors in calculating the costs and benefits of transit.It found that on an annualized basis, the annual cost savings generated by transit werebetween $61.9 and $78.1 billion. Using the 1995 figure for public expenditures ontransit of $15.4 billion, it found transit's ratio of public benefits to public cost to rangefrom 4.0 to 5.1.62 That's a rate of return most investors would die for.

A few more myths. . .

4. Most people do not want rail transit.

• "Once we get past local government officials' enthusiasm for rail transit we find thatthe majority of citizens voting on whether to authorize rail starts or expansions arevoting against them. Only two out of the 18 transit initiatives placed before votersin the last five years have been approved. It's not as if well-financed specialinterests are funding campaigns against these transit initiatives. Proponents ofincreased transit spending in Phoenix, Denver, and other cities have typicallyoutspent opponents by huge margins on transit tax ballot propositions." -- JohnSemmens, Rethinking Transit 'Dollars and Sense': Unearthing the True Cost ofPublic Transit, Policy Study No. 243, Reason Public Policy Institute, August, 1998,p. 21

Mr. Semmens' remarks of 1998 were followed by referenda on Light Rail in the twocities he mentions by name. In 1999, Denver voted on a proposal to borrow $457million to build the Southeast corridor Light Rail line; it passed with 66% of the vote. InMarch, 2000, Phoenix approved a sales tax increase to fund Light Rail by 65%.

And guess what the anti-transit minstrels never mentioned in calculating which "specialinterests" are working for or against such rail referenda? Themselves! They live on air,or so it is implied; their own visits to cities with pending transit referenda, and the workthey do there to defeat rail projects, are as free as the wind and the rain. Or at leastthey are charged to other accounts. . . the highway interests, perhaps?

In fact, the question of why some rail transit referenda pass and others fail is worthy ofa study in itself. Our observations lead to four tentative conclusions:

• It is difficult to sell something voters cannot picture. The term "Light Rail" means littleto most citizens. In the typical American city, streetcars and interurbans disappeared

43

half a century ago or more. Only the oldest voters are likely to remember them. Railtransit proponents need to do a better job of conveying what it is they are askingpeople to approve.

• Voters are more likely to approve a simple, inexpensive "starter line" than a massive,multi-billion dollar system. Once a starter line is up and running, enthusiasm formore often grows quickly. Dallas is one good example; having seen DART, citizensthere recently voted to speed up construction of more lines by an overwhelming 77%margin.

• People want to know exactly what they are voting for. They generally turn downvague proposals where the route is not specified precisely.

• Transit proponents often have little understanding of referendum politics. They donot know even such basics as voter ID and turnout. They fail to understand that, ina referendum, it is enough to create doubt; voters with questions in their minds voteno. The anti-transit troubadours understand this very well, and the myths theyspread are well calculated to create doubts. By failing to answer their chargesquickly and factually, transit proponents act as if they can simply coast to victory. And then they lose.

Rail transit ridership is rising nationwide, as people "vote with their feet" by taking railtransit. That is the best measure of whether people want rail transit. But translating thatsupport into votes to build more rail transit lines takes political sophistication. Transitopponents have repeatedly shown such sophistication, and too often transit advocateshave not.

A few more myths. . .

5. Monorail is better than Light Rail.

• "So if monorails are so great, why aren't there more of them? A multitude of reasonscan explain why you don't see monorail selected for rail transit needs that often. . .The conventional rail industry has established a stronghold and monorail isdiscouraged by consultants. We have many news clippings where falsehoods wereopenly given to help defeat monorail." -- The Monorail Society Website atwww.monorails.org/tMspages/why.html

Compared to conventional Light Rail, monorails are visually intrusive, technicallycomplex and much, much more expensive. In most cases, Light Rail should not costmore than $20 million per mile. In contrast, the new two-mile Newark Airport monorail

44

cost $175 million per mile, and the four-mile monorail to be built in Las Vegas is to cost$354 million, almost $90 million per mile.63

Monorail represents a common failing in considering rail transit, namely, fascination witha technology for its own sake. Whether the proposal is for monorail, automated LightRail, Skybus or whatever, the problem is the same. It all costs more for something that,to the transit rider, is no better than Light Rail and may well be worse. The average ridercould care less whether the train is propelled by linear induction motors or chipmunksrunning in cages. What he wants is a comfortable seat on a clean train that runs ontime. Light Rail can provide that as well as or better than more complex alternatives,and do so at a lower price. Remember, the lower the price per mile, the more miles youcan afford to build.

A few more myths. . .

6. Light Rail is not safe.

• "U.S. transit is also popularly believed to be considerably safer than the automobile. Transit bus services are safer than automobiles. However, urban rail (light rail,heavy rail and commuter rail) is generally less safe than automobiles." -- WendellCox, Why Light Rail Doesn't Work, Texas Public Policy Foundation, January, 2000,p. 13

Mr. Cox supports his assertion with data on his website (The Public Purpose, "UrbanTransport Fact Book") that shows an urban transport fatality rate per 100 millionpassenger miles of 0.745 for urban cars and trucks and 1.017 for urban rail, averagingthe years 1990-1997. But this is another apples to oranges comparison.

Urban car and truck accident fatality rates are lower because urban speeds are usuallylow. According to Transportation Research Record No. 1623, "Rail Transit SafetyAnalysis," the urban automobile accident fatality rate from 1993-1995 was 1.0 fatalitiesper 100 million passenger miles, compared to an overall national highway fatality rateof 1.44.64

However, most commuting journeys by car are not purely urban journeys. They includea long segment of suburb to city travel, which is usually made at much higher speeds-- and with higher fatality rates. Those segments have fatality rates approaching thenational norm, which are higher than the rates Mr. Cox's own tables give for urban rail.

Those urban rail journeys also usually include a suburban segment. But with rail, thereis essentially no difference between fatalities in suburban and urban segments. Urban

45

rail speeds for Heavy and commuter rail are about the same as suburban speeds forthose modes. Light Rail's urban speed may or may not be less, depending on thespecific rail line's mode of access to the center city.

Not only are the anti-transit troubadours deceptive in their arguments, they are wrongin their numbers as well. According to the Transportation Research Board paper citedabove -- a peer-reviewed publication -- the fatality rate for commuter rail from 1993-95was 0.37 per 100 million passenger miles, for rail rapid transit (Heavy Rail) 0.72 and forLight Rail 0.27.65 Mr. Cox's table on his website gives figures between 1.347 and 1.520for commuter rail, between 0.748 and 0.811 for Heavy Rail and between 1.564 and2.131 for Light Rail for the same years. The difference for Light Rail -- Mr. Cox's favoritesubject for 15-minute hates -- is striking.

One possible explanation -- Mr. Cox's website does not give sufficient information to sayfor certain -- is that Mr. Cox is including not only fatalities of Light Rail patrons, but alsopeople killed while walking on the tracks or driving in front of trains. If so, that too ismixing apples and oranges. But as you have probably gathered by now, mixed fruit isone of the anti-transit troubadours' favorite dishes.

A few more myths. . .

7. Transit infrastructure is only constructed to get federal money.

• "Perhaps the principal driving force in public transit infrastructure improvements suchas light rail is the availability of federal discretionary funding. Local areas have thepotential to obtain up to 80 percent federal funding match rates." -- Wendell Cox,Why Light Rail Doesn't Work, Texas Public Policy Foundation, January, 2000, p. 18

And, presumably, highway construction does not get federal funds? The fact is thatboth transit and highways get federal money, and transit gets less. The average requestfor federal funding for new transit projects now in the FTA pipeline is 51.8%, while theaverage federal share of highway new starts in FY 1999 was 81.7%.

Not only do local folks have to pony up more money for new transit projects, most newrail transit projects must pass a local referendum. So the people, not just the politicians,get to decide.

We'd like to make a little offer to the transit critics: let's have all new rail transit lines andall new road construction projects be subject to local referenda. Think they'll go for thatone?

46

A few more myths. . .

8. Rail transit does not help revitalize downtowns.

• "Light rail is often claimed by proponents to have significant development and landuse impacts. While there is little evidence of this, it is to be expected that the sectorof the community most likely to benefit from light rail would be downtown. . . Thelatest available data (9/1999) shows downtown Dallas to be among only fourdowntown areas with vacancy rates above 20 percent, at 32.0 percent, and secondworst only to Oklahoma City. This situation has not improved since light rail wasopened (June 1997)." -- Wendell Cox, "Dallas: High Downtown Vacancies DespiteLight Rail," The Public Purpose Urban Transport Fact Book

This is a classic example of the way the anti-transit troubadours give facts, but not allthe facts. Let's add a few more:

• As of the second quarter, 2000, the average downtown vacancy rate for citieswithout rail was 12.8%, for cities with Light Rail 11.4% and for all cities with rail 8%.66

• Wendell Cox talks about Dallas, but not other cities with new Light Rail systems. What do we see if we look at Denver, Portland, Sacramento and San Jose? Downtown vacancy rates in those cities in the second quarter, 2000, were 5.8%,5.4%, 5.8% and 1.5% respectively.

• Between the second quarter, 1999, and the second quarter, 2000, Dallas'sdowntown vacancy rate dropped from 32.1% to 27.7%, one of the most rapiddeclines in the country.

Dallas, and a few other cities such as Los Angeles and St. Louis, continue to have highdowntown vacancy rates despite rail transit. This makes what should be an obviouspoint: rail transit alone cannot save a downtown that leaves other massive problemsunaddressed. In fact, it is difficult to speak of a "downtown" in Los Angeles, a city thatepitomizes sprawl. But rail transit is working in a wide variety of cities as a central partof the effort to revitalize downtowns. One of the places where it is doing so successfullyis Dallas, where the falling vacancy rate leaves Mr. Cox hoist with his own petard.

A few more myths. . .

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9. Transit is an 'inferior' good; as incomes rise, demand declines.

• "Public transit is what economists refer to as an 'inferior' good. For a 'normal' good,the quantity consumed rises as people's income rises. For an 'inferior' good, thequantity consumed falls as people's income rises." -- John Semmens, PublicTransit: A Worthwhile Investment?, Goldwater Institute, December, 1999, p. 3

As we have pointed out again and again, all transit is not created equal. Consumptionof bus transit sometimes does decline as incomes rise. But that is not true of rail transit.A major study, Commuting in America II, found that "transit does not appear to beoriented toward the low-income population, as is commonly thought. Although bus usedoes decline with income, the use of other transit modes, particularly commuterrailroads, increases with rising income."67

We gave a concrete example of this phenomenon in our first study, Conservatives andMass Transit: Is It Time for a New Look? Studying Chicago's excellent Metra commuterrail system, we found that in DuPage county, more than 15% of commuters withincomes over $75,000 took the train. In Lake county, the figure was 13%. In the samecounties, less than one-tenth of one percent of people with incomes over $75,000 rodethe bus. In Lake county, the mean earnings of rail commuters were more than $76,000;the figure for bus riders was less than $14,000. The mean earnings of rail commuterswere more than double those of people driving to work alone.

Over and over, rail transit proves the transit critics wrong. Yet those same critics alwaysfavor bus over rail. Could there be a connection here?

A few more myths. . .

10. Transit inefficiencies and failures are the result of politics.

• "The central theme of our findings is that economic variables fall short of explainingbus pricing and service policy. . . that politics, in general, has influenced policy onbus transportation and thus emerged as the likely source of the inefficient policiesthat we have identified." -- Clifford Winston and Chad Shirley, Alternate Route: Toward Efficient Urban Transportation, Brookings Institution, 1998, p. 78

Here we plead guilty as charged. Politics have led to inefficiencies and failures in publictransit. Politics have created situations where rail transit lines cross local beltwayswithout a station and park-and-ride lots (Baltimore), where routes have more time-

48

consuming turns than a drunken snake (Hudson-Bergen line) and where unnecessarytunneling has wasted millions of dollars (Massachusetts commuter rail).

But politics has exactly the same effects on highway construction and on every otheraspect of building and maintaining infrastructure. It's all part of living in a democracy.Democracies reconcile competing interests most often by compromise, andcompromises seldom offer ideal solutions. In theory at least, dictatorships can makedecisions of this sort more efficiently (in practice, they don't). On balance, we'll takedemocracy, inefficiencies included.

The answer to this problem is more democracy. As we've noted before, most transitprojects require approval by the people in a referendum. When a proposed project hasmade too many bad compromises and come up with a poor route, overbuilt line(unnecessary tunneling is often the culprit here) or just too high a price tag, peopleshould vote it down. The planners get that message in a hurry, and when they improvethe proposal, people can then vote yes.

Let us repeat our little challenge: why not make all highway projects subject to the samereferendum process? For some strange reason, the anti-transit troubadours neverseem to sing this song. Perhaps they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. . .

A few more myths. . .

11. Rail transit is a federal conspiracy.

• "Beginning in 1991, the federal government began using transportation policy tofurther two overarching transportation goals: 1) discourage the use of theautomobile and 2) reinforce Clean Air Acts objectives. The first goal would beaccomplished by discouraging the creation and expansion of highways androadways by funding and further subsidizing alternative travel modes such aswalking, bicycling, buses and rail transit." -- Samuel R. Staley and James Damask,If You Build It, Will They Ride? The Potential of Rail Transit in Ohio's Major Cities,Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, October, 1999, p. 8

There has indeed been a federal -- also a state and local -- government conspiracy inthe area of transportation policy for most of the 20th century. But the purpose of theconspiracy has been exactly the opposite of what the transit critics claim. Governmenthas conspired not to favor rail transit, but to destroy it.It is useful to remember that early in the 20th century, most people traveled by rail.Between cities, they took passenger trains on the "steam roads" or the interurban. Inthe city, they rode the streetcar. All those trains and almost all the streetcars were

49

operated by private companies that received no government subsidy, built andmaintained their own tracks and bought their own trains, and paid taxes. Why, then, didwe end up where we now are, dependent on automobiles for most of our travel?Because government provided massive subsidies to highways. Understandably,unsubsidized and taxed rail transportation could not compete with untaxed and heavilysubsidized roads.

But that's all just history, right? Wrong. Having all but wiped out passenger rail travelwithin the city and between cities, government now provides modest subsidies to whatlittle is left, and occasionally to attempts to bring some back in the form of new Light Raillines. But the most recent figures, those for 1999, show the federal governmentproviding $3 billion for urban rail transit capital costs and nothing for rail transit operatingcosts, plus $609 million for Amtrak. In contrast, in the same year the Feds subsidizedhighways with $26 billion. And, as we noted earlier, the Feds now fund only about halfof the cost of new transit projects, but more than 80% of new highway projects.

A federal conspiracy? You bet. One that has favored highways all the way.

A few more myths. . .

12. Transit is not important because its market share is so small.

• "Public transit is clearly a declining industry. Ridership peaked during the World WarII period at 23 billion or so trips per year. . . As World War II came to an end and lifereturned to a more normal peacetime mode, public transit lost most of its marketadvantages. Ridership declined by about two-thirds, from 23 billion annual trips tobetween eight and nine billion in recent years. Public transit's share of urbanpassenger-miles fell from 50 percent in 1945 to barely 2 percent by 1995." -- by JohnSemmens, Public Transit: A Worthwhile Investment?, Goldwater Institute, December1999, p. 1

As noted elsewhere in this paper, transit ridership has in fact been rising in recent years.In 2000, transit carried 9.4 billion trips.

But the problem here is not the answer but the question. Asking what percentage oftotal trips transit carries is misleading. As we pointed out in our previous study, DoesTransit Work? A Conservative Reappraisal,68 only about half of American householdshave transit available, and only about one-quarter have transit available that theyconsider "satisfactory." People cannot ride what isn't there.

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Moreover, transit has never carried a large share of certain types of trips, such asshopping trips -- which today are the single largest category of "total trips."

A better measure of transit's effectiveness is transit competitive trips. That is to say,what percentage does transit carry of trips for which it can compete? For transit to becompetitive, three criteria must be met. First, transit must be available. Second, theavailable transit must be high quality -- which usually means rail transit. And third, thetrip purpose must be one for which transit can compete, which usually means trips toor from work or to or from entertainment.

Statistics are not currently collected in such a way that we can measure transit'ssuccess precisely in terms of the percentage of transit competitive trips carried. But asDoes Transit Work? A Conservative Reappraisal demonstrates, the figure is clearly farhigher than the 1% or 2% usually given by the transit critics. For example, Chicago'sMetra commuter rail system in 1990 carried 21% of commuting trips to the CentralBusiness District.

For those who want a more detailed answer to this myth, we recommend our earlierstudy, Does Transit Work? A Conservative Reappraisal.

A few more myths. . .

13. Transit systems are poor stewards of public funds.

• "Over the past 30 years, considerable sums have been used to subsidize transit --total public subsidies have exceeded $360 billion, more than the cost of theinterstate highway system. As public funding has become available, transit agencieshave spent considerable sums lobbying Congress, state legislatures and localgovernments for higher levels of tax support. Nationally, transit has focusedprimarily on revenue enhancement. Transit has been considerably less aggressivein its efforts to minimize unit operating costs." -- Wendell Cox, The 1999 TexasTransit Opportunity Analysis: Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County("Metro") Ill-advised, Texas Public Policy Foundation, 1999, Part 2, p. 1

The problem here is generalization. Some transit authorities are poor stewards of publicmoney, while others give the public excellent return on investment. Chicago's superbMetra commuter rail system in 1999 covered 49% of its expenses from fares, whiledevoting another 5% of passenger revenues to capital expenses. In FY 1989, 1990 and1991, the South Line of the San Diego Trolley actually made a profit.

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We must again note the irony here: Mr. Cox, like most of the anti-transit troubadours,consistently favors buses over rail. But in most cases the operating cost of rail transitis less than that for buses, and the farebox recovery rate is higher. When we add in thefar greater attractiveness of rail transit to riders from choice, it is clear that rail transitmakes the best use of public money.

A few more myths. . .

14. Rail transit does not increase property values.

• "Low rail transit ridership explains the absence of land-use impacts. That, in turn,undermines any plan to 'capture' land value appreciations. There simply are novalue increments to tax." -- Peter Gordon, A Transit Plan for Hillsborough County: A Reality Check, Reason Public Policy Institute, June, 1998, p.6

Numerous studies show increased property values around rail transit stations. A fewexamples:

• "Section III looks at changes in taxable values between 1994 and 1998 for propertieslocated near DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit light rail) stations as well as a sampleof commercial, industrial and residential properties in comparable neighborhoods notserved by DART rail. The jump in valuations around DART stations was about 25percent greater than in the control neighborhoods. . . " -- Bernard L. Weinstein andTerry L. Clower, The Initial Economic Impacts of the DART LRT System, Universityof North Texas, Center for Economic Development and Research, July, 1999, p. 1

• "The impact of twelve rail projects (including both heavy rail and light rail) throughoutNorth America is compared to develop general conclusions about the impact of railon property values. In general, proximity to rail is shown to have positive impacts onproperty values. . . " Roderick B. Diaz, "Impacts of Rail Transit on Property Values,"Booz Allen and Hamilton, Inc., 1999

• "It appears that there are indeed property value impacts on single family residentialproperties resulting from commuter rail service. At the regional level access to theCBD provided by commuter rail service has an appreciative impact on propertyvalues. Even more notable is the finding that single-family residencies located incommunities that have a commuter rail station have a market share value that isapproximately 6.7 percent greater than that of residences in other communities." --Robert J. Armstrong, Jr., "Impacts of Commuter Rail Service as Reflected in Single-Family Residential Property Values," Transportation Research Record 1466, TRB,1995

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Enough said.

A few more myths. . .

15. Before federal involvement, transit paid for itself.

• "Starting in the mid-1960s, federal policy encouraged public takeover of the privatelyowned, self-supporting transit industry." -- Charles Lave, "It Wasn't Supposed toTurn Out Like This: Federal Subsidies and Declining Transit Productivity," PTIJournal, Vol. 9, No. 1, February, 1995, p. 8

In fact, most transit companies were in serious financial trouble long before the mid-1960s. And government, far from taking over prosperous transit operations, was aprincipal reason so many private transit companies were in dire financial straits.

Permit us to indulge, for a moment, in one of our favorite pursuits: looking at the historyof electric railways, which were almost synonymous with transit in the first half of the 20th

century. Government caused three great financial crises for electric railways --interurbans and streetcar systems -- that drove most of them out of business. The firstcame around World War I. The years between 1915 and 1920 saw rapid inflation,which electric railways were not allowed to balance with increased fares. Why? Because local governments controlled fares as part of the railways' franchiseagreements, and they would not approve increases that would anger the voters. By1919, one-third of all transit companies were bankrupt. A report prepared for theFederal Electric Railways Commission in 1920, based on testimony to the Commissionin 1919, stated:

The character of the electric railway industry, the impossibility of leavingit to be carried on as a private business, the failure of public regulation tosolve the problem advantageously either for the electric railwaycompanies or for the public, the inherent limitations of the service-at-costplans, the impracticability of dealing effectively with the labor problemunder private management, and the fact that the cost of capital without thesupport of public credit has become prohibitive, all point to the conclusionthat, with respect to local transportation, public ownership and operationare an ultimate necessity.69

The prosperity of the 1920s saw a recovery in the transit industry, but it also brought anew government assault, one that would eventually do the industry in. By 1921, the firstyear for which data are available, government -- federal, state and local -- was pouring

53

$1.4 billion into highways (equal to an annual investment of $13.5 billion in today'sdollars).

By 1940, that number had risen to $2.7 billion. That is after a decade of severedeflation, and it represents serious money. By way of comparison, in that same yearthe total operating costs, including taxes paid, of all transit systems (except commuterrail) were $661 million.

As if facing massive subsidized competition and the Depression were not enough, in1935 Congress passed the Public Utility Holding Company Act, which the Securities andExchange Commission interpreted as requiring electric power companies to divestthemselves of their transit operations. In many cases electric railways were survivingonly because they were part of the power business, which had grown out of the railwaydecades earlier and had come to surpass it. The divestment order was a deathsentence to electric railways across the country.

Between 1909 and 1940, 489 transit companies operating 30,302 miles of electricrailways went bankrupt. To put those numbers in perspective, by 1937 there were only478 transit companies left in the U.S., operating 23,770 miles of track.70 Notsurprisingly, a study of government investment in transit before 1940 states in itsabstract,

The advent of federal assistance was the culmination of a movement oftransit from the private to the public sector that began nearly 70 yearsearlier. Enormous public investments in subway and elevated railwayinfrastructure were made in Boston and New York around 1900. After theturn of the twentieth century, state and local governments began acquiringand operating transit services. During the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s,hundreds of transit systems passed into trusteeship or were abandoned.This survey of public investment in transit and the financial difficulties oftransit agencies before 1940 demonstrates that a vision of transit as aprofitable private enterprise in the years before federal financialassistance is not accurate.71

A few more myths. . .

16. Light Rail is promoted by overly low fares.

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• "We must also take into account that rail is often promoted with lower, or even freefares. St. Louis and Buffalo have free fare zones. Sacramento's central area fareis only 50 cents. Portland lowered the fares for some trips. Los Angeles keeps thefares for rail less than for comparable bus journeys. St. Louis lowered its fares,making long journeys (more likely to be taken by rail) relatively cheaper. Indeed, itis worthwhile to ask if the costly rail investments were necessary to raise ridership,or if the same results could have been achieved by using the money spent on rail tolower fares and improve bus service." -- Robert J. Franciosi, Light Rail in the Valley: What Awaits Voters at the End of the Line, Goldwater Institute, February, 2000, p.5

Beyond pointing out once again that buses cannot substitute for rail transit because theycarry different types of riders, let us just note two facts:

1) In 1999, 13 Light Rail systems offered reduced or free fares, compared to 139bus systems; and

2) Of 19 American cities with both bus and Light Rail transit, 15 have the same basefare for both bus and rail. In two of the four exceptions, Boston and Cleveland,the bus fare is lower.72

A few more myths. . .

17. Cutting spending on transit would allow tax cuts.

• "Tri-Met will receive more than $120 million in employment-based taxes this yearalone, and this revenue source is growing rapidly. A cut of $100 million per year intaxes would still leave over $20 million per year to provide subsidies for low-income,transit-dependent users." -- Anthony M. Rufolo, Low-Cost Solutions to Portland'sTraffic Problems: Congestion Pricing and Free-Market Transit, Cascade PolicyInstitute, May, 1998, p. 20

As the title of Mr. Rufolo's paper suggests, money is spent on transit because we havea traffic problem. As conservatives, we are all for cutting taxes. But there is still thattraffic problem, and it has to be solved. If it is not solved by spending tax money ontransit, then it will have to be solved by spending at least as much tax money and maybemore on building highways. People rightly hate paying taxes, but they also hate beingstuck in traffic.

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A few more myths. . .

18. Transit subsidies should be directed to users, not providers.

• "Public subsidies for transit should be directed to the users of the transportationsystem rather than the service providers. If the subsidies were provided to users,who could use them to purchase transit service or alternative transportation services,then they would promote the most efficient provision of service rather than simplyallowing costs to increase." -- Anthony M. Rufolo, Low-Cost Solutions to Portland'sTraffic Problems: Congestion Pricing and Free-Market Transit, Cascade PolicyInstitute, May, 1998, p. 4

In theory, this proposal has merit. In a situation where someone could choose betweentwo competing transit services, subsidizing users could allow the money to flow towhichever service was best.

The problem, of course, is that there are very few situations where people have a choicebetween two competing transit services. Transit is capital-intensive, rail transitespecially so. Where is the capital to come from to construct two competing rail transitlines where one could serve the market? One could of course compete buses againstrail transit, but our guess, given the superior attractiveness and lower operating cost ofrail, is that the bus line would not be in business very long.

Like many of the proposals advanced by libertarians, this one has very little real-worldapplication. Most libertarians like Robert Heinlein's novel, The Moon Is A HarshMistress. Could it be lunar transit systems they are writing about?

A few more myths. . .

19. Light Rail is social engineering.

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• "Apparently, besides costing taxpayers billions of dollars, light rail is not aboutimproving transportation efficiency, it is social engineering that attempts to changetransportation and housing preferences." -- Daniel R. Simmons, Randy T. Simmonsand Samuel R. Staley, Growth Issues in Utah: Facts, Fallacies, andRecommendations for Quality Growth, Sutherland Institute, October, 1999, p. 35

One of the more creative unstated assumptions behind the transit critics' work is theassumption that the way we live now is "natural." Almost complete dependence onautomobiles to go anywhere or do anything, traffic-choked roads and suburban sprawl-- it all just "happened." A quip by Oscar Wilde comes to mind: "The problem with being'natural' is that it is such a difficult pose to maintain."

In fact, we got to where we are through social engineering, massive amounts of it. Inno other society in history have places to live, places to work and places to shop beenseparated from one another, separated so widely that you need a car to get from oneto another. Why did it happen here? Because after World War II, social engineers re-wrote the building codes to mandate it. In most places, if a developer now wants tobuild a traditional town, a place where you can walk from home to work or shopping, hecan't. The codes won't let him.

Light Rail is far too modest a tool to reverse this, even if it were used for that purpose.No transportation system can reverse what is mandated in building codes, namelysprawl. But as conservatives, let us offer a modest proposal. Why not let the freemarket determine whether people want traditional towns or suburban sprawl? Insteadof one building code, let there be two, one for traditional neighborhood development andone for sprawl. It would be up to the developer to choose which one he prefers, achoice that obviously would be driven by what people want to buy. Let the people whowant to live in sprawl do so, but also let those who prefer old-fashioned towns have thatchoice.

The anti-transit troubadours sing endless love songs to the free market. This is a freemarket proposal. How about it, boys?

A few more myths. . .

20. Transit costs more than it should.

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• "Evidence presented in this paper strongly indicates that although the entire loss intransit ridership might not have been prevented, much higher levels of transitridership could have been achieved with the same level of subsidy or the sameridership could have been achieved with much less subsidy." -- John F. Kain, "TheUrban Transportation Problem: A Reexamination and Update," in Essays inTransportation Economics and Policy: A Handbook in Honor of John R. Meyer,Brookings Institution, 1999, p. 396

As noted previously, the problem with statements such as this is that they generalizewhat cannot be generalized. The size of public subsidy varies greatly from one transitsystem to another. Some cover more than fifty percent of their costs from the farebox;others cover only about ten percent. Nor can costs be considered without reference towhat is purchased. A high quality, well-run rail transit system offers a more usefulproduct than a down-at-the-heels bus line, because the rail system can draw riders fromchoice and thus relieve traffic congestion. If its farebox recovery rate is lower, that maybe justified (in reality, it will almost certainly be higher).

The point is, sometimes transit costs too much and sometimes it doesn't. How can wedetermine when it is costing more than it should? Let us offer a few suggestions of ourown here, based on many years of observing public transit:

• While federal subsidies are often necessary for capital expenditures, operating costsshould be borne locally. Let's face it, too many local politicians regard federal dollarsas "free money." If they can pass inflated operating costs on to the Feds, they havelittle reason to control them (especially when doing so can mean a nasty fight witha union). If they have to pay the full operating cost subsidy out of local taxes, theyhave an incentive to keep that subsidy down by operating efficiently. And frankly,if a locality does not care enough about transit to ante up the operating subsidy, itprobably shouldn't have transit.

• If the farebox recovery ratio is less than 40%, the transit authority's political mastersshould want to know why. There may be valid reasons. Many bus systems recoverless than 40% of their costs from fares, but that is part of serving the transit-dependent. Los Angeles's Blue Line, the most heavily used Light Rail line in NorthAmerica (with the Green Line), covers only 17.3% of costs from fares.72 Part of thereason is that it runs through Watts, which is a high-crime area. To keep crime offthe trains, each train carries a cop. Cops are expensive. Nonetheless, in our view,40% is a reasonable target. Certainly most rail systems should be able to attain that(remember, rail costs more to build than bus, but less to operate). If a system isn'trecovering that much of its operating costs from fares, it is appropriate to find out thecauses.

• Commuter rail should be the least expensive type of rail transit to get up and running,because in most cases the tracks are already there. Unfortunately, some railroads

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have decided to play robber baron with regard to proposed commuter services,demanding tens of millions of dollars in track upgrades before they will allowcommuter trains to run. Their own freight trains will benefit from those upgrades, andthey are happy to hold commuter services hostage to get the freebies.

Of course, in some cases the expensive upgrades are necessary. But where they arenot, the local transit authority or government might try a new tactic to break the robberbaron's chain: condemning train paths -- not tracks -- by eminent domain.

A train path is the right to run a train on a specific track at a specific time. That is all acommuter train needs. It does not need the track all the time. The transit authority doesnot need to own the track, it just needs to have occasional use of it. Taking a train pathby eminent domain would provide exactly that.

We do not know of any attempts to use eminent domain to take train paths, nor can weforecast how courts might rule. But a transit authority that were willing to find out wouldgive itself a useful tool if the local railroad plays the robber baron game. It would nolonger be forced to choose between leaving the public without commuter rail service orpaying millions of tax dollars to the benefit of the railroad's stockholders. We're all infavor of the railroads making profits. But those profits should be earned, not extorted.

A few more myths. . .

21. Trains are noisy.

• "Fears about light rail ruining businesses and bringing noise and disruption to theclose-in South Austin neighborhoods drew about 40 people to an anti-light-rail rallyon South Congress on Monday morning. Led by Max Nofziger, a paid consultant forthe anti-rail group ROAD. . . " -- Kelly Daniel, "Light Rail: Austin's Best Option? CapMetro Previews Routes for Light Rail", in the Austin American-Statesman, August8, 2000, p. A1

In the old days, the sound of a streetcar squealing and screeching around a curve wascommon. But we have learned a few things since then (like rail lubrication). Rail transitcan easily be made very quiet. A readily-available study, TCRP Report 23, Wheel/RailNoise Control Manual, tells how. A memo introducing the study notes:

[TCRP Report 23, Wheel/Rail Noise Control Manual], provides practicalstep-by-step procedures for mitigating wheel/rail noise by usingtechnologies with demonstrated effectiveness. . . The manual coversnoise generated on tangent track, curved track, and special trackwork. Mitigation measures include onboard, track, and wayside treatments. . .

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In today's climate of environmental consciousness, transit systems arebeing called upon to reduce noise, which previously was considered anintrinsic part of their operations. Wheel/rail noise generated at either sharp radius curves or on tangent track is considered objectionable. . . 74

Now, what about highway noise? A Light Rail line may have a car going by every fiveor ten minutes. Highways make noise all the time. And while we know how to controlnoise made by rail transit, how do we control the noise from mufflerless motorcycles,emergency vehicles with screaming sirens, the ubiquitous eighteen-wheelers, and -- ourleast favorite -- those cars where the whole vehicle has become one big radio speaker?As conservatives, we would like to see the personal, holster-carried, home-on-radiomissile as an antidote to the latter, with tax credits for making ace.

In every respect -- noise, air pollution, land use and visual intrusion -- Light Rail, doneright, has far less environmental impact than a highway. Conservatives appreciate thatas much as liberals. To borrow a phrase from J.R.R. Tolkien, we too would like a worldwith less noise and more green.

A few more myths. . .

22. The overhead wires for Light Rail are ugly.

• "Proponents of Light Rail. . . don't mention that Light Rail requires a spiderweb ofoverhead wires with support posts." "Monorail vs. Other," The Monorail SocietyWebsite, www.monorails.org

The overhead wires for Light Rail can be ugly, but they don't have to be. When theyare, it is because of the curse of too many Light Rail systems: overbuilding. Not onlydoes overbuilding waste money, it often creates an intrusive right-of-way with too manywires, massive poles and too many of them, track with a heavy "industrial" look -- inshort, an eyesore. Examples are, sadly, all too numerous; perhaps Pittsburgh comesmost readily to mind.

It doesn't have to be this way. Older, simpler approaches are both cheaper and better.If you want to see Light Rail done right, take a look at the St. Charles Avenue line inNew Orleans (yes, old-fashioned streetcars are also Light Rail if they have their ownright-of-way). The St. Charles Avenue line goes right through what may be the mostbeautiful urban district in America. It does not detract from that beauty; if anything, itadds to it. The poles are graceful, the overhead wire is barely visible, and by grassingin the track they have made it almost disappear. The cars, built in the 1920s and stillin service, are ornaments, beloved by local residents.

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Your community can do it right or do it wrong. If you want to do it right, theTransportation Research Board has published two studies we recommend highly. Thefirst is TCRP Report 7, Reducing the Visual Impact of Overhead Contact Systems.75 The second is TCRP Report 17, Integration of Light Rail Transit into City Streets.76 Bothare profusely illustrated, so you can see just how doing it right should look.

Speaking of ugly, we have yet to find a study on how to make a twelve-lane urbanfreeway beautiful. Perhaps Wendell Cox can bring one to our attention. . .

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Critiquing the Transit Critics

The anti-transit troubadours have a great deal of fun criticizing proposals for new transitservices. It's easy enough to do, so long as you don't let the facts get in your way. Butwhat about their proposals? Mostly, the critics are careful not to make any. But wherethey have, we can have some fun too -- usually just by pointing out what they haveactually said.

The anti-transit troubadours have set themselves up for the music critics in two ways. First, they have tried to disguise themselves as prophets, gazing deep into their crystalballs to predict the success or failure of new rail transit lines (can you guess which onethey always predict?) Second, in a few cases, they have laid out their own solutions toa city's transit needs, offering some real high comedy in place of their usual low farce.

Let's first see them in their prophets' robes.

In March of 1994 the Independence Institute published a paper opposing Light Rail forDenver, Colorado. The title was "Stop that Train: RTD's Light Rail Boondoggle is on aFast Track for Disaster." In fact, Denver's expanding Light Rail system has been a greatsuccess, carrying more people than projected -- almost 30,000 per weekday on justfourteen miles of line. The farebox recovery ratio in 1999 was 43.2%, compared to24.1% for the Denver bus system.77 The most recent referendum in Denver onexpanding Light Rail passed with 66% of the vote.

Similarly, the Sutherland Institute put out a paper in 1999 opposing Light Rail for SaltLake City. Author Peter Samuel said:

Salt Lake City is plunging ahead with a second light rail project, evenbefore the first is up and running. The promise of $480 million dollars (sic)in federal funds for the east-west line apparently proved too tempting forstate legislators to resist. It may provide a superficial benefit for theOlympic city, but this short-term gain will be at the expense of future localtaxpayers who will be lumped with the huge year-by-year costs ofsubsidizing the losses incurred by urban rail. In every city wherepassenger rail has been built in the past decades, rail systems fail torecover via the farebox more than half of their operating costs, let aloneany return on the capital investment. And when, as usual, ridership fallsfar short of expectations, the rail enthusiasts will say it is because thesystem isn't comprehensive enough. . . Will Salt Lake City have $480million available to repay the feds when no one is riding the rail line? Light-rail proponents tell us not to worry.78

Not to worry, Peter; almost 20,000 people are riding Light Rail in Salt Lake City everyweekday, with Saturday ridership sometimes hitting 25,000 (projected weekday ridershipwas 14,000). The feds won't be wanting their money back anytime soon. Salt Lake's

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most recent referendum on starting commuter rail, on November 7, 2000, passed with53%, 54%, and 58% of the vote in each of three counties.

If the anti-transit troubadours aren't very good prophets, they do seem to have anothertalent. They would make great creative writers for horror flicks. Instead of "Nightmareon Elm Street," their specialty is "Nightmare on Your Street." And no one does it betterthan our old friend Wendell Cox.

Not long ago, Wendell descended on Atlanta. This time, instead of just criticizing, Mr.Cox laid out his own proposal for solving Atlanta's traffic congestion problem. Thetown's main paper, The Atlanta Constitution, reported on the "Cox Plan" in some detail,noting that:

"In ways that he never intended, Wendell Cox has done metro Atlanta anenormous service. . . It is the first time anyone has tried to spell out justwhat it would take to accommodate 1.5 million more residents, all drivingas much as or more than today's residents. Cox calls it a "New Vision,"but it's more like a regressive hallucination.79

The essence of the "Cox Plan" for Atlanta is quite simple: pave the city. Again, wequote from the Atlanta Constitution:

Cox believes it would be realistic to create a grid of arterial roads six toeight lanes wide, no more than one mile apart, throughout metro Atlanta.He also says there should be another grid of freeways crisscrossing theregion. . . He calls for building freeways underground in double-deckedtunnels and double-decking other above-ground freeways. He advocatesadding another deck exclusively for trucks. . . In essence, Cox issuggesting that between now and 2025, we should raze Atlanta as weknow it and replace it with Los Angeles --- on steroids.80

While Mr. Cox and the other anti-transit troubadours talk endlessly about the costs ofrail transit, they have little to say about the costs of their alternative highway expansionplans. The Atlanta paper notes the omission:

Cox doesn't try to guess how much his vision would cost, but heacknowledges that it is likely to be more than the $36 billion in the 25-yearplan prepared by the Atlanta Regional Commission, a figure that alreadyrepresents every known source of transportation revenue and thensome. . . Even if we had the money, would we really want to pay theaesthetic, environmental, social and other costs? Will quality of life beimproved when we are all within earshot of a roaring freeway? Will we stilllove a metro Atlanta carved into so many rat mazes, living inneighborhoods cowering beneath behemoth, multidecked freeways?

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Cox's assumption that free-flowing traffic is the only characteristic of a cityworth caring about is pathological.81

Poor Wendell; he really should have stuck to criticizing other people's more thoughtfultransportation plans instead of venturing his own. Perhaps he had been reading PeterSamuel's paper from the Reason Public Policy Institute, How to "Build Our Way Out ofCongestion",82 which advocates building 24-lane double-deck freeways in southernCalifornia's earthquake zone.

Sadly, this is one of the few instances where the transit critics have put forward theirown solution. But combined with their failed prophecies, it allows us to say in big boldletters what most of our readers will by now have understood for themselves, viz.,

THESE PEOPLE DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT!

They haven't a clue! They don't understand that bus and Light Rail serve differentpeople and different purposes. They can't comprehend the disastrous effects too manycars have on cities. They can't even see what everyone else sees, probably includingtheir own grandmothers, namely, that driving a car in rush hour in the city is a pain in theyou-know-what! All of which leads us to the modest conclusion of this study.

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Conclusion

Beyond all the specific facts we have recounted here to confute the transit critics, onebroad fact stands out. It is the best answer to all the anti-transit myths. It may also bethe best reason why more cities should build rail transit. What is it?

Wherever people get to see and ride rail transit, they want more of it.

A pattern is beginning to emerge. Someone -- a mayor, a transit authority, it doesn’tmatter who -- announces a plan to add rail transit to a city that has none. The planfaces a referendum. The anti-transit troubadours descend on the city, and thereferendum fails. Maybe it fails several times. But eventually, one line gets built --usually Light Rail, sometimes commuter rail or even a heritage streetcar line.

People see it, ride it, love it and want more.

It happened in Dallas. Ken Hoffman of the Houston Chronicle, writing about Dallas'sDART Light Rail system, told the usual story:

Light rail didn't always get a "way to go" in Dallas. In 1988, voters turneda resounding thumbs-down, and a few other fingers, on light rail. ButDallas Area Rapid Transit built a 20-mile rail "starter kit" with borrowedmoney, anyway. The trains began rolling through downtown in June 1996.Light rail was an overnight sensation, standing room only (literally), thatkeeps getting more popular.83

In Dallas's most recent transit referendum, a proposal to speed up Light Railconstruction passed with 77% of the vote.

This pattern, seen also in Denver and Salt Lake City, points to both the greatest strengthof the anti-transit troubadours and to their eventual extinction: the only people wholisten to them are people who have not experienced rail transit.

Most American cities lost rail transit 50 years ago or more. Few people in those citiesnow remember what it was like. When someone proposes that they build "Light Rail,"nobody understands what it is. So it is easy for the transit critics to come in, spread theirmyths around and confuse the voters. In referenda, confused voters vote "no."

But once a "starter line" is up and running, the whole picture changes. People can seeLight Rail, and ride it. Once they do, they find it is something they like. Even if theyhave a car, they think, "hey, this would be a great way to get to work or to the ballgame." Now, when they go into the voting booth, they are not confused. Theyunderstand the question they are voting on. Unless the specific proposal is badlydesigned, they usually vote "yes."

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And they have no further interest in the myths spread by the transit critics. They haveseen the thing itself, and that is always the best answer to myth-makers.

Thus, our conclusion: if you want rail transit in your city, start small. Don't ask thevoters to approve some massive, multi-billion dollar system when they don't evenunderstand what they are voting on. Build a starter line. Keep it simple. Keep it cheap.Build it where people want to go. If you design it right, you can probably get it up andrunning without federal dollars, which makes the whole process much simpler andfaster.

Then let it sell itself.

Soon enough, you won't have to be asking the public to approve more rail transit. Theywill be asking you.

At that point, if the troubadours come around singing their laments, they will find thepublic taste has changed. The new hit song will be, "Clang, Clang, Clang Goes theTrolley," and the troubadours will find their time has come, and gone.

Until that happy day, we hope our answers to the anti-transit myths and myth-makerswill help you hold the field.

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NOTES

1. "Light Rail's Newest System Exceeds All Expectations," Center for TransportationExcellence, September, 2000

2. "Riders Like Light-Rail's Latest Link, Southwest Train Line 30% Over Estimates,"by Tillie Fong, Rocky Mountain News, Denver, July 25, 2000

3. "Denver RTD Light Rail Ridership Continues to Grow," Passenger Transport,September 25, 2000, p. 43

4. "Westside MAX Celebrates Two Years on Track," by Bill Stewart, The Oregonian,September 13, 2000

5. TR News, "Why Success in St. Louis?", by William D. Warren, Sept-Oct. 1995,pp. 22-23

6. 1999 National Transit Database, Federal Transit Administration, 2001

7. Ibid., p. 5

8. Impact Assessment of the Virginia Railway Express Commuter Rail on Land UseDevelopment Patterns in Northern Virginia, December 1993, Northern Virginia PlanningDistrict Commission, p. VIII-5

9. 1982 Transit Impact Monitoring Program Annual Report, Atlanta RegionalCommission, March, 1983, p. 35

10. Regional Transportation District Light Rail Passenger Survey, May, 1995, HowellResearch Group, Denver, Colorado, pp. 17-18

11. Public Transit in America: Findings from the 1995 Nationwide PersonalTransportation Survey, Center for Urban Transportation Research, Tampa, FL,September, 1998, pp. 4-2 and 4-3

12. Communication from Colonel Ronald Henderson, Chief of Police, City of St.Louis, Missouri, March 13, 2001

13. Scientific American, "Transportation's Perennial Problems," by W. Wayt Gibbs,October, 1997

14. "Peak Hour Roadway Lane Capacity," Light Rail Now! Website,www.lightrailnow.org, July 10, 2000

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15. "Response to Reason Foundation Anti-Rail Paper," by Lloyd H. Flem,Washington Association of Rail Passengers, July, 1997, p.6

16. Transportation for Livable Cities, by Vukan R. Vuchic, Center for Urban PolicyResearch, CUPR Press, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 1999, p. 210

17. Letter from E.L. Tennyson, P.E., to Paul M. Weyrich, June 26, 2000; see alsoEdson L. Tennyson, "Impact on Transit Patronage of Cessation or Inauguration of RailService," Transportation Research Record 1221, Transportation Research Board,Washington, DC, 1989, pp. 59-70

18. Market Research Survey, Bus & MetroLink Customers, Winter 1993, Bi-StateDevelopment Agency, March, 1994, pp. 9-10, 23-29

19. The Potential of Public Transit as a Transportation Control Measure, CaseStudies and Innovations, National Association of Regional Councils, July, 1998, p. 5

20. "Ridership Statistics," Portland Tri-Met Website, www.tri-met.org, February 22,2000

21. Calculated from 1999 National Transit Database, Federal Transit Administration,2001

22. Letter from E.L. Tennyson, P.E. to Paul M. Weyrich, June 26, 2000

23. Conservatives and Mass Transit: Is It Time for a New Look?, by Paul M. Weyrichand William S. Lind, Free Congress Foundation and APTA, 1996, p. 15

24. TCRP Report 55, Guidelines for Enhancing Suburban Mobility Using PublicTransportation, Washington, DC, Transportation Research Board, 1999. p. 4

25. Ibid., p. 22

26. "Westside MAX: A Light Rail Success," Passenger Transport, September 25,2000, p. 55

27. Op. Cit., TCRP Report 55, p. 53

28. Ibid., p. 55

29. KPMG Peat Marwick, Fiscal Impact of Metrorail on the Commonwealth ofVirginia, November, 1994 pp. 2-3

30. "MetroLink's Riders," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 21, 1994 p. 3 and St. Louis'MetroLink Economic Impact, Bi-State Development Agency (undated), p. 1

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31. Inmotion, the official newsletter of Dallas Area Rapid Transit, Spring, 2000, insidefront cover

32. Ibid., p. 2

33. Ibid., p. 6

34. Policy and Planning as Public Choice: Mass Transit in the United States, byDavid Lewis and Fred Laurence Williams, Ashgate Publishing Co., Burlington, VT, 1999,pp. 234-235

35. St. Louis' MetroLink Economic Impact, letter from Edward A. Ruesing datedJanuary 5, 1995, Bi-State Development Agency, 1995

36. TCRP Synthesis 21, Improving Transit Security, by Jerome A. Needle and ReneeM. Cobb, Transportation Research Board, 1997, p. 1

37. Ibid., p. 1

38. Transit Security Handbook, prepared for the Volpe National TransportationSystems Center, submitted by Boyd Maier & Associates, March 2, 1998, p. 25

39. Ibid., p. 27

40. Ibid., p. 27

41. Ibid., p. 29

42. Ibid., p. 29

43. Ibid., p. 33

44. "Security Assessment of San Diego Light Rail Transit Service," by Jeffrey Martin,in Seventh National Conference on Light Rail Transit, Vol. I, November 12-15, 1995,p. 260

45. Ibid., p. 261

46. Transit-Generated Crime: Perception Versus Reality -- A Sociogeographic Studyof Neighborhoods Adjacent to Section B of Baltimore Metro, by Stephen L. Plano, TRBRecord No. 1402, Washington, DC, 1993, p. 59

47. Ibid., p. 62

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48. "Crime on Maryland Mass Transit Administration Light Rail Line: Myth orReality?,” by Bernard Foster and Ronald Freeland, Seventh National Conference onLight Rail Transit, Vol. I, November 12-15, 1995, p. 254

49. Ibid., p. 256

50. Op. Cit., "Security Assessment of San Diego Light Rail Transit Service," p. 257

51. "Frequently Asked Questions About New Light Rail Projects," Santa Clara ValleyTransportation Authority Website, www.vta.org, September 22, 2000

52. "Metro Blue Line Ridership Patterns Following the Opening of Metro Center inDowntown Los Angeles, Final Report" by M. Schildkraut, R. Jackson, R. Aguirre and A.Galindez, SCRTD, Los Angeles, CA, October, 1992, p. 23

53. Ibid., p. 15

54. "Southwest Light Rail Passenger Survey: Preliminary Highlights," RegionalTransportation District, Denver, December 8, 2000, p. 3

55. "San Diego Trolley Orange Line and San Diego Trolley Blue Line," Light Rail NowWebsite, www.lightrailnow.com, July 10, 2000

56. "A Comparison of Solo Driver and Carpooler Modal Shift to New Rail TransitLines," by John Neff, Papers and Proceedings of the Applied Geography Conference,Volume 21, pp. 330-337

57. Ibid., p. 336

58. Access, "Does Contracting Transit Service Save Money?," by William S.McCullough, Brian D. Taylor and Martin Wachs, Fall, 1997, pp. 22-26

59. Saving Energy in U.S. Transportation, Washington, DC, U.S. Congress, Officeof Technology Assessment, July, 1994, p. 109

60. Based on driving 15,000 total miles per year. "Your Driving Costs: 1999 Edition,"AAA Association Communication, Heathrow, FL, 1999, pp. 6-7

61. Op. Cit., Policy and Planning as Public Choice, pp. 17-18

62. Dollars and Sense: The Economic Case for Public Transportation in America,by Donald H. Camph, Campaign for Efficient Passenger Transportation, Washington,DC, 1997, Table S-2, p. 16

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63. Newark figure from News from the Washington Coalition for TransportationAlternatives, No. 11, Summer, 1996; Las Vegas figure from Railway Age, November,2000, p. 8

64. "Rail Transit Safety Analysis 1993, 1994 and 1995," by E.L. Tennyson,Transportation Research Record No. 1623, Transportation Research Board,Washington, DC, 1998, p. 112

65. Ibid., p. 112

66. All vacancy data from CB Richard Ellis, "United States Office Vacancy Index," 2nd

Quarter Flash Report

67. Commuting in America II: The Second National Report on Commuting inAmerica, by Alan E. Pisarski, Eno Transportation Foundation, Lansdowne, VA, 1996,p. 56

68. Does Transit Work? A Conservative Reappraisal, by Paul M. Weyrich andWilliam S. Lind, Free Congress Foundation and APTA, 1999

69. Municipal Franchises: A Description of the Terms and Conditions upon whichPrivate Corporations enjoy Special Privileges in the Streets of American Cities, by DelosF. Wilcox, Engineering News Publishing Co., New York, 1921, p. 657

70. Government Investment in Transit Before 1940, by John Neff, paper presentedat the Association of American Geographers 94th Annual Meeting, March 29, 1998, p. 41

71. Ibid., abstract

72. Data from 1999 Transit Fare Summary, American Public Transit Association,1999

73. Adopted Budget Summary For the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 2001, LosAngeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, p. 2-5

74. TCRP Report 23, Wheel/Rail Noise Control Manual, Washington, DC,Transportation Research Board, 1997, Forward

75. TCRP Report 7, Reducing the Visual Impact of Overhead Contact Systems,Washington, DC, Transportation Research Board, 1995

76. TCRP Report 17, Integration of Light Rail Transit into City Streets, Washington,DC, Transportation Research Board, 1996

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77. "Expense Recovery Ratios by Mode, Fiscal Year 1999," American PublicTransportation Association, 2000

78. "Supply, Demand and Transit: The Costs of Light Rail," by Peter Samuel,Sutherland Institute, April 9, 1999

79. "Road Report is Blueprint for Razing Atlanta Region," Atlanta Constitution,Editorial, July 6, 2000

80. Ibid.

81. Ibid.

82. How to "Build Our Way Out of Congestion", by Peter Samuel, Reason PublicPolicy Institute, January, 1999

83. "Dallas Makes Most of Its Light Rail Lines," by Ken Hoffman, Houston Chronicle,June 14, 2000